Nothing in the business world exists in a vacuum. Every service, every department, every piece of a company is connected. Marketing is connected to customer service. Customer service is connected to daily operations. Marketing is connected to sales.
Or is it?
Is your marketing integrated into your company sales strategy? Are you investing in marketing that your sales team can use? Are you putting valuable marketing tools in your sales team’s hands?
If not, reconsider. Even the most awesome salesman or woman appreciates solid marketing that they can use to boost sales and improve the bottom line.
Invest in a good website
“Don’t judge a book by its cover” is junk in the business world. The truth is that customers judge a company by first impressions—both in-person, printed, and online—every day. Online, this is especially true for company websites, where a slow-loading or low-quality website leads to high bounce rates. Put simply, if your website is subpar (in design or functionality) or doesn’t load quickly, potential clients and customers leave and move on to other companies with functional websites and sales teams they can contact.
To generate leads for your sales team, build a functional, well-designed website with clear call-to-actions and easy contact forms. Designate a staff member responsible for passing the potential e-mails generated from the website to a member of the sales team, and follow-up to ensure that all contacts are responded to promptly.
Get your website at the top of local search results
Warning: it’s time for another saying that is completely not true in marketing. “If you build it, they will come.” A website is not going to attract visitors on its own (or leads to the sales team); behind every successful online business presence is a well-executed website promotion plan and strategy.
One of the most effective ways to promote a website—and to attract leads for the sales team—is local website optimization. This technology optimizes a company’s website for local keyword searches (in this case, local to business location) on major search engines, such as Google and Bing. There are a lot of marketing agencies that offer the service; select an agency that can show examples of past successes and can provide regular reports of data that indicate ongoing local website optimization success. Local optimization gets local visitors researching relevant services and products to the business website; a well-designed website gets messages that the sales team can follow up on.
Produce content the sales team can use
Another effective way to attract local leads is with visual and well-written content. Content regularly added to a website earns a business extra credit with search engines (who value websites that add fresh high-quality content)—and can serve as the ideal way to build trust with prospective clients.
To achieve the latter, set up a plan of strategic content promotion by every member of the sales team. Train the sales team to use the content in emails (individual or mass communications) or on social media to build trust with prospects.
Make sure the communication goes both ways; ask members of the sales team to not only use the content, but to reciprocate with information that produces relevant content for future communications. Because of their regular contact with prospective clients, salespersons can provide frequently asked questions that can be used to provide quality content (either by company marketing or by a marketing agency) they want to use.
Manage online brand management tools
Prospective clients are researching services and products, and the companies that provide and produce them, with an (alarming) regularity. This trend is only alarming if the company brand is the subject of numerous negative reviews—negative reviews that can play a significant role in the amount of (or lack of) prospects contacting the sales team.
To keep the phone ringing off the hook, take ownership of online reviews. Set up a system for requesting and monitoring online reviews or contact a company with automated brand management software. Respond to all negative and positive reviews; use these tips to respond to negative reviews in a positive manner. View a negative review as an opportunity to showcase stellar customer service. Thank positive reviewers for their input and notify the sales team of all positive reviews so they can use them in their future communications with prospective clients.
