What Every Sales Leader Needs to Know When Selling to the Modern Marketing Executive

The modern marketing executive has seen every sales trick in the book. When you consider that he or she leads their own team of marketers who strive to generate awareness and demand for their sales team, anyone who sells a marketing solution must take an approach with the marketing leader that will get their attention and win their trust.

In our webinar Enter into the Mind of the Marketing Executive Buyer we assembled a panel of three marketing executives to answer seven questions every sales leader wants to know.

The webinar was hosted by Vengreso CEO, Mario Martinez Jr. He led a lively discussion that centered around our panelist’s response to these seven questions:

• How far along are you on your buying journey before to a first meeting with a supplier?
• When you consider the most recent solution you purchased, how did that vendor get their first meeting with you and begin to win your confidence?
• What form of personalization is relevant and valuable when sales reps engage with you?
• How does a sales rep bring value in their engagement with you?
• What’s the role of the sales leader in executive alignment with you?  
• What’s one of the best examples of a vendor who transformed into a trusted partner with you?
• What’s your one big piece of advice for sales leaders to help their teams win confidence and business with senior marketing executives?

Our panelists were:

Paul Johns, CMO SAI Global, Rashmi Vittal, CMO, Conversica, and Joe Schwartz, VP, Corporate Marketing at Proofpoint. Over the span of nearly one hour, each of our panelists shared their responses to these questions. We observed four common themes across each of them as it pertains to each question.

Do Your Homework

Before you contact a marketing executive be sure to read up on recent events at their company. Prepare your messaging carefully in your outreach to demonstrate that you are being authentic. Avoid using mass messaging if you want to get the attention of a marketing leader. They are busy solving their own marketing challenges associated with generating awareness, competitive differentiation, lead generation for their sales teams and communicating results to their c-suite. Look to understand their current situation to the extent you can discover that through public-facing information. Some examples include announcements of recent acquisitions, new product announcements, strategic partnerships, etc.

Personalized Outreach

The panelists discussed the effectiveness of personalizing outreach to them at two distinct levels. At one level, personalize around your understanding of their specific challenges and goals as a marketing executive and how you can help address them. We call this personalizing to the buyer persona and is essential to succeeding in modern sales. They also expressed interest in personalization at the individual level with discretion. For example, if a marketing executive has been awarded a professional achievement or recently spoke at a conference and you watched the video, personalizing your communication in a way that recognizes these achievements demonstrates that you’ve taken the time to learn about them. The cliché “people buy from people” was mentioned as reinforcement to this point.

Omni Channel Touchpoints

Our marketing executive panelists unanimously expressed disdain for receiving phonecalls from sales people, at least as the initial touchpoint. Likewise, they all agreed that touching them through multiple channels can be effective, provided they are relevant and not excessive, which of course is counterproductive. The omnichannel approach of email, LinkedIn, phone, video or text follow up can be effective when it’s implemented reasonably, which leads to the fourth and most compelling common theme among our three panelists.

Demonstrate Value

Above all, what marketing executives want from sales professionals is help solving problems. If you’ve done your homework and you have insight into how your solution can really help the marketing leader solve a business challenge, it is imperative that you clearly communicate your value. And, while (as they each mentioned) the timing may not be right for your solution, if you demonstrate value in each touchpoint through relevant content and consistent but not overbearing communication, you have a much greater chance of getting the attention and possibly a meeting with the marketing leader, when the timing is right.

At Vengreso we teach the PVC methodology^TM of sales outreach in our course. It stands for

Personalization

Value

Call to Action

During the webinar, Mario was pleased to validate with our three marketing executive panelists that using the PVC approach is an effective way of getting on their radar, earning their trust, building relationships and winning long term business alliances.

This article is a brief summary of the webinar. If you want to hear how each panelist answered the seven questions grab a cup of your favorite beverage and set aside an hour to watch the webinar replay. You may want to share it with your entire sales team to help them learn how to enter into the mind of the marketing executive buyer.