Why Sales and Marketing Alignment Is Important
With prospects increasingly self-sourcing information and solutions to their challenges, the length of time sales is directly engaged during the buying journey and decision process is shrinking. For this reason, it’s more important than ever to align marketing and sales. We cannot afford to miss a late stage opportunity, so it is critical to enable sales with upstream prospect intelligence and the tools to make the prospect experience seamless as they get involved to support the buying decision.
%
By 2020, over 85% of the transactions between businesses will be completed without human intervention.
(Gartner Group)
%
Buyers will have completed 60% of their info gathering prior to speaking with a salesperson.
(Sales Executive Board)
%
Only 65% of sales reps can find the content they need to send to prospects.
(IDC)
%
Of the 18 million sales people in 2011, only 3.6 million will be needed by 2020.
(Selling Power)
The Growing Need for Sales Enablement
Sales enablement allows teams to achieve sales targets in a scalable, predictable and repeatable fashion. It’s designed to democratize the best practices, so you’re not dependent on a handful of superheroes to hit your business growth goals.
A big part of sales enablement involves equipping sales people with information and assets they can use in sales cycles. This information might take the form of content, training, best practices, research, real time prospect or account intelligence and automation tools.
Fight the Good Fight & Combine Forces
We can make sales enablement a deliberate element in your sales and marketing programs, with the following results:
- Accelerate opportunities in the sales pipeline
- Increase the efficiency and effectiveness of your sales organization
- Give you an edge over the competition in head-to-head sales
- Eliminate discontinuities in buyer experience to reduce loss from the funnel
Sales enablement marketing can provide a fresh perspective, unlocking your selling potential and bringing much needed pipeline performance improvements across the board.