If you have a streamlined workflow between environments such as marketing, sales and compliance, then you are doing just great! Most companies are not so lucky, because it is a difficult task to accomplish—unless you have the right solution. It is a story we all know too well, where each work environment tends to do its own thing due to differing objectives, priorities and resources. What is the solution? E5A recently moderated a webinar, in conjunction with Synthesis and Mediafly, discussing best practices to streamline workflow processes to optimize success in sales.
Here is the typical storyline: The marketing department creates the standard presentations that are meant to be used by the sales team. But often times, salespeople find the presentations created by marketing to be too general, not laser-specific nor prospect-focused. Then, each salesperson tweaks the presentations to be geared better to his or her audience, and in this process, often doesn’t have time to get reviewed by compliance, adding to business risk. All of this creates messaging inconsistency and is also, unfortunately, an ineffective use of time and work. What these companies are left with are multiple versions of a sales deck and all three departments on different pages.
To create easily manageable sales presentations, each department needs to know and understand their role in order to execute the sales process seamlessly. The solution for midsize to large organizations is possible through a digital transformation that automates processes, streamlining the smooth transition from marketing to sales, with compliance weaved in throughout.
In our webinar, we discussed the Three Pillars of Sales Success: 1) predictive analytics 2) content automation and personalization and 3) sales engagement. Predictive analytics is the stage where marketing should focus their efforts. The goal is to broadcast a wide net of data-selected prospects and then calculate which prospects are truly interested or qualified to be then sent over to the sales team. The first step is to research your universe of prospects. After running its target campaign, marketing should uncover—through data—which prospects are worth investing the sales team’s time to pitch. The next step is to narrow and focus your targets through behavioral tracking and engagement. Did they express enough interest? Are they ready to take on your services? This improves the productivity and effectiveness of the sales team by guiding them to the highest probability prospects (we at E5A do this every day).
The second pillar—content automation and personalization—is to ensure that the content that marketing has created is made accessible to sales-on-demand, and can be updated quickly and accurately. This is where Synthesis comes in. They have come up with a software platform, customization processes, and implementation for companies to have a digital transformation; allowing them to be more organized, even when managing hundreds of versions of one core presentation. They do this by creating a central content repository of slides that are linked to data feeds, so that one can update and refresh content automatically. It allows one to utilize dynamic content within the slides to provide sales with the flexibility to personalize the information for their audience, within the guardrails of compliance. Content automation with this layer of compliant personalization on top of it ensures brand consistency, customer centricity and compliance throughout the sales process. It’s not just a bunch of slides. They have already tackled most marketing materials.
Mediafly’s specialty comes in at the third pillar—sales engagement. Mediafly’s technology allows salespeople to access all of their compliant content and pull up any type of content asset on the fly in order to have a very organic and meaningful conversation with a client. This includes presentations, fact sheets, videos and interactive tools. A CRM integration here improves adoption of the technology, tracks sales activity, and records meetings and presentations. It also features the abilities to capture real-time input from buyers and easy pivoting in the moment to create engaging conversations.
These three pillars are meant to aid companies in developing holistic solutions that enable buyer-centric conversations, while also allowing the flexibility to create personalized and compliant content. This is what we call a win-win-win for marketing, sales and compliance!
If you would like to hear more about the sales success formula of blending customization and compliance, please check out the recording of our webinar.