Sales and marketing are two different aspects, but they need to go hand-in-hand if you want to achieve explosive sales success. However, there seems to be a disconnect between the two and that’s where many new salespeople are having difficulty. They have failed to bridge the gap between marketing and sales. Sometimes, we get too caught up in focusing on just one customer when sometimes we need to take a step back and look at the bigger picture.
In this episode, we invited Barry Doctor over to discuss how you can bridge that gap between sales and marketing, how to think like a marketer to achieve sales success, and some strategies you can apply to pin down your market segment.
Here are the highlights of our conversation with Barry:
Barry’s coolest sales experience as a customer with Comcast 🙂
Marketing vs. Sales
- Sales people are focused on individual customers; marketers look more at a bigger picture
- Marketers focus on the buyer and the buyer’s journey
Applying the “n = many” mentality in your sales effort
- Create the buyer’s persona
- Find a market segment that sticks
How to find your market segment:
- “Measure twice, cut once”
- Do your research
- Understand your market
- Select a narrow target as your market segment
- Build more market segments in the future, but focus on the niche first
- Understand your buyer and what your buyer wants
How sellers can more prepare and think like marketers:
- Look at the big picture
- What market segment are you targeting?
- What does the buyer persona look like?
- Find the right buyers to be more efficient
- Take objection not as a roadblock but an interesting point
- Ask the buyer what they really need
- See if there is a broader market demand; otherwise, sell at a premium, higher price
Losing a business to gain more business:
- Follow the voice of the customer in the market
- Stop shooting in the dark
- Make use of analytics and research to have better understanding and positioning
- Talk to the deals that you’ve lost and those you’ve won
Strategies to better understand your segment:
- Get someone or a neutral third party to call (preferably a professional that can have an executive level conversation)
- Look at how many deals you do a month. For example, call 30 out of 100 deals you’ve won and 30-50 out of deals you’ve lost
- Gaining rich-source data: testimonial snippets, understanding the trends
Tactics of great sellers that reflect their understanding of marketing:
- Getting the customer’s attention
- Doing the opposite of what everyone else is doing
Current projects Barry is working on:
ProductCamp, an “unconference” because it’s self-organized by volunteers for volunteers, who are local practitioners working with products to help learn from and teach each other. It is an event for product managers and marketers.
Event details:
What: ProductCamp South Florida
Who can join: Product managers and marketers
When: March 14, 2015
Where: Boca Raton, South Florida
Connect with Barry through LinkedIn.
Barry’s Major Takeaway:
Take the time to understand the journey that the buyer is going on. Then you can lead them to your salesperson by putting marketing out there on the internet to be found, making information freely available to help them make the right decision to buy your product.
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