Reid-On - Integrating Sales and Marketing Communications for better results

Integrating Sales and Marketing Communications for better results

August 25, 2002

A vice president of sales I once worked with frequently opened meetings with the comment, "There are two types of employees - those in sales and those that help support sales." While many didn't like the comment, it's hard to deny the fact that a company not making its sales targets most likely won't be around for long, no matter how well the other functions operate. His observation is in sync with an initiative introduced by GE's new CEO Jeff Immelt, called "Front Room, Back Room," in which the company will be more aligned with, and touching the customer, as opposed to focused on internal administrative functions.

While corporate communications/marketing communications staffs are attuned to competitive forces and marketplace dynamics, they often don't a have detailed understanding of their own company's quarterly pipeline. They often don't know which customers or sectors represent key targets for your sales force and which products are selling better than others and why. But they should.

Align PR goals and Sales objectives:
To ensure that the good press coverage you secure is actually making a difference in terms of revenue, your team should focus on projects that will help the sales force close deals. The tech market can shift rapidly making it difficult to maintain real-time understanding of the sales focus, if your efforts are not well coordinated. Most sales teams have monthly and quarterly operating reviews that examine in detail current opportunities and pending challenges. These meetings can provide you with valuable information to help fine-tune your PR campaigns. While Sales won't want too many extra people at the meeting, they are usually thankful for the interest and help if you request to attend.

Make the tools you have easily accessible to Sales:
Press releases, case studies and other materials that you create can be very valuable to your sales team. However, I've found that even if you email this output to the entire sales team, they rarely keep the information at hand. Sales are paid to focus on customer sales not archiving information - so when they want the information, they spend too much time hunting for it, thereby losing valuable selling time.

We developed a tool to centrally house all the collateral and information developed by the corporate communications department and make it available to the sales force and others. We call it the Customer Resource Center, and it's simply an online matrix. Along the upper quadrant are the resource categories - case study, press release, quote, image and product/service. Down the vertical axis are customer names. The matrix is populated with icons which link to the documents, and can be sorted by customer or product, allowing Sales quick, easy access to material that can help them when pitching a new customer.

Help Sales help you:
Customer references are an important part of the selling process, as well as the communications process. A company's story is best told (or validated) by its customers. In this period of extreme skepticism, reporters are much less likely to cover your story without customer data. They want proof that it works…not just another hyped beta.

To make it easier for Sales to enlist customers into our communications program, we developed a simple online presentation they can use with customers, which highlights the benefits of working with us and maps out the typical process. It's important to discuss all the issues and facts up front. Many companies waste time working with the wrong contact on the customer side, only to find after weeks of work, that they never approve this type of project, or they want to reword everything.

Reward and Recognize:
To show the importance of sales reps involvement in the communications process, we regularly award four or more reps per quarter with a PR Star. An email, which is sent to the sales and leadership teams, explains the valuable role the rep played, the results and usually includes a link to the coverage that resulted from the effort. In addition to the notice, the reps each receive a $100 gift certificate redeemable online.

Other quick tips:
It's never a good idea to contact sales reps near the end of a quarter, unless absolutely necessary. That is when the most intense selling goes on, and they need to remain focused on reaching their targets. Also, when scheduling conference calls with Sales, it's always best to hold them early in the morning, before they begin calling customers.

The communications department and the sales force basically serve the same function: communicating a company's value to its customers and prospects. If the two organizations are misaligned, then a company is fundamentally working against itself and missing the opportunity to reinforce its message to the market.

Posted by Reid at August 25, 2002 08:09 PM

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