Going Beyond Marketing and Sales Alignment with Justin Shriber, Episode #96

We’ve all heard how critical it is for sales organizations to work on marketing sales alignment, but my guest on this episode of #SellingWithSocial goes a step further to make the two a powerful combination that closes more deals.

Justin Shriber is Vice President of Marketing for LinkedIn Sales and Marketing solutions, where he helps buyers, sellers, and marketers connect via the world’s largest professional network. For the past two decades, Justin has focused on helping companies accelerate growth and profitability by delivering solutions that align marketing, sales, and service with the needs of the customer. Prior to joining LinkedIn, Justin led Product, Sales, and Marketing organizations at both startups and large companies such as Siebel and Oracle.

Join us for this conversation where we go in-depth about Justin’s latest brainchild – Marketing Sales Orchestration. You’ll learn how it is different from marketing/sales alignment and account-based selling, why it’s important for both sales organizations and buyers, and how it can literally shorten the sales cycles and close more deals. Be sure you listen!

Subscribe to Selling With Social

Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Google Play | Google Podcasts

This podcast is being brought to you by SAP Sales Cloud, formerly CallidusCloud. With SAP Sales Cloud’s modern CRM, you can focus on coaching and developing sales reps, instead of forecasting. Learn more by visiting: www.calliduscloud.com/Vengreso

Marketing Sales Alignment Is Only A Beginning. We Need More

Nobody is against marketing/sales alignment. We know we need to be working together toward the common goal of closing more sales. But though we share information and work together on resources, we don’t truly coordinate a campaign or promotion using all the available resources of both departments. That’s where Justin’s idea of Marketing Sales Orchestration comes in.

Think of an orchestra – all the varied instruments playing together. You hear melodies, harmonies, rhythms, and more – and it all combines to make a beautiful whole. That’s how we want our marketing and sales departments to function… together, in harmony, with a powerful impact only possible because of the orchestration of both.

On this episode, Justin and I unpack what this kind of orchestration looks like, right down to the tools available to make it happen. You won’t want to miss this. The things Justin shares could enable you to engage with customers more powerfully on social, make your emails more effective, and close deals FASTER than ever before.

Marketing Sales Orchestration Creates Powerful Customer Experiences

You know the difference between customer satisfaction and customer experience, don’t you? Satisfaction is how they feel when nothing is wrong with the service they received. But the customer’s experience has to do with the entire process of getting to what they receive from your team – which impacts client retention and happiness over the long haul more than mere satisfaction. The way Justin says it, “Happy customers are more likely to be with you over the long term.”

Marketing Sales Orchestration is squarely aimed at providing an amazing experience for customers. It does that by pooling the resources of both the marketing and sales departments, orchestrating them into a powerful customer engagement machine, and moving prospects into the sales cycle seamlessly. Here are the basics.

The Powerful Synergy Of Marketing And Sales Orchestration

The MSO approach is powerful because, in a typical scenario, marketing and sales have different datasets from which to draw. Marketing can tell the types of audiences available – which gives an indicator of the general universe of people involved. The sales data allows the sales team to know which accounts have been closed previously and who was involved in the process.

Using that combined data, you can determine what accounts to focus on and the personas to target. That’s when you can go to work and watch amazing things happen. As the deal is being negotiated, content shared via social can have a greater impact and sales cycle times reduce. All of that brings about an increase in conversions over time.

MSO Creates Social Content That Engages With Real Buyers

Walk through a scenario with me: You’ve just had a successful first sales call. Everything went well. How and where do you continue to engage with that customer to progress the relationship?

The orchestration of marketing and sales that Justin describes on this episode answers that question for you. The marketing department can help by providing content that is ideal for the customer persona you’ve identified. Using LinkedIn PointDrive, you can create content containers the sales team can use to post value-add content that customer will see on social. This gives the salesperson a tremendous advantage.

But take it beyond that one customer. Marketers can do profile matching (finding prospects with similar profiles to that customer) to know what like customers are engaging with and what they are interested in. This enables the sales team to share targeted, relevant content that proves your organization’s ability and willingness to be of service – to prospects likely to need what you have to offer.

But when you take this approach, make sure your social profiles are up to date. They’ve got to be more than an online resume. That’s because sales relationships start before the first email goes out. 64% of buyers look at a sales reps profile to decide if they will engage. They are looking to see if the salesperson has demonstrated expertise and relevance – if they are willing and able to provide services and resources to their customers?

“Yes” answers to these questions give prospects the confidence and trust need to believe your organization might be able to help with their needs.

How To Get Started With Marketing Sales Orchestration

1. Get alignment between sales and marketing to make this kind of orchestration a priority. Put senior people on it and your teams will follow.
2. Focus on the data: It’s often the huge barrier that keeps well-intentioned teams separated. Find ways to bring all the datasets together.
3. Determine a process: Get your sales and marketing leaders in the room together for every step. Make sure everyone contributes and makes the plan a success.

This podcast is being brought to you by SAP Sales Cloud, formerly CallidusCloud. With SAP Sales Cloud’s modern CRM, you can focus on coaching and developing sales reps, instead of forecasting. Learn more by visiting: www.calliduscloud.com/Vengreso

Outline of This Episode

• [6:30] MSO: Marketing Sales Orchestration – the logical extension of ABM
• [7:40] The two halves of MSO – planning & execution
• [15:40] The underused social resource: The Company Page
• [21:34] Start building sales relationships before you say “Hello”
• [27:47] The data is difficult: Sales and marketing typically use differing systems
• [33:35] Using social media content searches to find prospects and engage with buyers
• [36:47] The power of LinkedIn video for marketing and sales
• [45:00] How to get started with MSO

Resources Mentioned

• Connect with Justin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinshriber
• Follow Justin on Twitter: https://twitter.com/linkedinselling
• Justin’s all-time favorite movie: Cool Hand Luke
• Justin’s previous episode on SWS
• LinkedIn InMail
• LinkedIn Point Drive
• Sales Navigator
• The State of Sales Report for 2018
• LinkedIn Elevate
• LinkedIn Video
• ZubTitle
• Seamless.ai
• Social Business Engine Podcast – Bernie Borges

Connect with Mario!

• www.vengreso.com
• On Facebook
• On Twitter
• On YouTube
• On LinkedIn

Subscribe to Selling With Social

Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Google Play | Google Podcasts

Click to Tweets: