Leverage Integrated Marketing Services

Featured Person: Chad Root, Spearhead Sales and Marketing, President/Founder

Integrated Marketing Services with Sales Activities

CR: I’m Chad with Spearhead Sales and Marketing and I will continue to break down some high points from a video we did with Mr. Rick Horn, talking about top performing salespeople and how they leverage marketing. Our firm Spearhead, has been dancing the line between sales and marketing since 2006. We are involved in sales activities, sales support, and marketing communications. So what we’re trying to do is help salespeople and sales oriented companies leverage today’s marketing platform and still build towards all the fundamentals that have helped salespeople be successful over the years.

So what I put in front of us today, is what I’ll call a formula. There’s this idea in design thinking that you go through mystery, model, and formula, it helps you zero down the specific functions that need to happen in order to be successful.

Sequence of Integrated Marketing Services

In this case, what I’m showing you today, is progress towards a sale. This occurs at a company level as well as salesperson level. If you think about mass retail or products that are communicating towards a mass audience being more marketing related and one on one being more sales related, there’s still a progression toward a sale. The question for a lot of salespeople, is what might that map look like, how many touches or interactions do you need to have?

We’ve done a ton of research over the years and what we’ve found is you need a minimum of 5-7 personalized interactions to close a sale. Personalized, for salespeople, means we start to think, about being unique.

I want to encourage you to think about today’s marketing world and the things you can do to leverage your marketing department and marketing communications. That will still allow you to have personalized interactions and actually help you leverage marketing so that you get more done.

Personalizing Your Sequence

What we’re showing you here is a sequence. We’re going to start out with an old school picture of a radio spot. In reality, the radio is very effective if used right. It can allow salespeople to participate kind of like what I’m doing on this video today. Salespeople can also be a part of a radio cast and help get their voice out to a larger audience at once and it’s very cost effective. A radio spot, for example, may tee up an opportunity for salespeople to send or receive a one on one phone call. Now that target audience has two interactions, they’ve heard a radio spot or made/received a phone call from a salesperson.

Hopefully, that interaction will result in a face to face meeting. Again, that’s a personalized sales interaction. The salesperson may or may not lean on marketing for support. They may go to marketing and request a customized powerpoint presentation or tweak and tailor some branding elements towards the client. But there’s still a mutual collaboration between sales and marketing to pull the event off well.

After the meeting, one of the interactions that have performed extremely well over time is the personalized thank you card. If you have a high volume of these type of things that you are completing, you need to involve marketing to get this process automated yet still personalized. The direct mail piece works best left in the hands of your marketing staff. The details and content of the box are important, as well as staying on top of the logistics and staying on budget.

After the direct mail piece is another phone call. The point of this phone call is to follow with people who’ve responded to the offer from the direct mail package. After these steps are complete, the next course of action is to set up a meeting. That’s when you’ll be collecting and offering thoughts towards developing a specific plan with the potential client, working your way towards a sale.

Notes

• Leverage marketing technology but respect sales fundamentals
• An integrated sales and marketing “formula” is a sequence of branded communications and personalized sales interactions
• Successful sequences require collaborations between sales and marketing
• If salespeople find themselves creating marketing materials, STOP! Turn it over to marketing
• When targeted buyers react to a marketing communication, it gives salespeople a reason to follow up

Conclusion:

This sequence is just one example. There are a plethora of different ways to create your own sequence. Depending on your market and the individuals involved. This is just the basic groundwork and fundamentals of what we mean when we speak about formulas. For the next video, we will pick back up on tactics and details as far as social media integration and digital components that are involved. Thanks for watching, you can contact us at info@spearheadsalesmarketing.com