11 Amazing Ways B2B Marketers Should Empower Sales in 2017

Going into a new sales year, it’s more important that ever to ensure that sales and are in lock-step. One of the biggest mistakes that I see B2B companies make is assuming that Marketing’s job is simply to generate leads. Sure, generating high-quality leads is an essential ingredient in a healthy sales pipeline. But the best marketers can provide sales with powerful resources that can influence deals and maximize revenue throughout the entire sales cycle.

Here are 11 amazing ways that marketers can help reps supercharge their sales efforts in 2017.

Prioritize Sales Leads

One way that B2B marketers can help sales reps use their time more effectively is by helping reps prioritize leads. One of the best ways to help prioritize leads is by using lead scores. B2B marketers typically are already using a tool like Marketo, Pardot or Hubspot to prioritize sales leads. But those same scores can be used by reps to help them determine who to reach out to first. If your reps are calling down lead lists in Salesforce, for example, those lead lists can be sorted by the lead score field. As a result, reps can spend more time talking to the leads that are most likely to close.

Set Up Desktop Alerts for Reps

When customers fill out certain forms (e.g. pricing forms) salespeople should know about it. Marketing can help sales by setting up desktop alerts that notify reps when high value forms are filled out. That way, reps can follow up quickly when a prospect fills out a contact form or downloads a piece of content that indicates that they’re sales ready. Marketing automation tools like Pardot offer alerts that reps can use to be notified in real time when a customer fills out a form.

Provide Buyer Persona Templates

Chances are that your customers have some things in common. Buyer persona templates can help reps identify which key roles they typically sell to. They can also provide some common pain points that prospects in those roles experience, as well as what prospects in various roles are looking to accomplish. To help you get started, we created a Buyer Persona Template that you can download for free.

Route Calls to Reps Based on Marketing Data

Most companies with inbound sales teams use some sort of call routing. But sales teams routing engines are rarely sophisticated enough. With the right solution, marketers can route calls to the most appropriate rep based on buyer intent data. To do this, marketers need to use a call tracking system that can capture the channel, campaign, or even keyword that a prospect viewed prior to calling. This data can then be used to route callers to specific reps based on the marketing effort that inspired the call. For example, if a prospect calls in after clicking on an ad for wireless routers, the call could automatically be routed to a sales rep that specializes in selling wireless routers. Routing calls to product specialists automatically can have a powerful effect on inbound close rates.

Provide Reps with Call Tracking Data in Real Time

Providing sales reps with a CTI can enable marketers to share call tracking data with those reps at the time of inbound calls. For example, our call tracking solution logs the source of inbound calls in Salesforce and delivers that source data to reps the moment the phone rings via a CTI screen pop. The result is that our customers know what to sell prospects before even answering the phone.

Provide Competitor-Specific Collateral

We always recommend that our customers track which competitors they are winning and losing deals to in Salesforce. Then, if you notice that you’re reps are going up against specific competitors often then you should consider crafting specific content that shows ways that your company is better than that specific competitor. Then, the next time one of your reps finds themselves in a deal against that competitor, the collateral can help them to gain an advantage.

Alert Reps to Content Downloads

Marketing automation platforms like Marketo and Pardot can be used to alert sales reps when leads fill out forms and download web content. It’s important to share this data with inbound sales reps in real time. If a hot lead downloaded content, it can present a perfect window for salespeople to reach out to them.

Email Templates

In order to ensure that messaging is consistent between Sales and Marketing, marketers can provide reps with email templates. Those templates can then be customized and personalized by the sales reps.

Help Reps Prioritize Leads

Marketers often use marketing automation platforms for lead scoring. For those of you who aren’t familiar, a lead score assesses how hot a lead is based on a variety of activities. Visiting web pages, filling out forms and downloading particular pieces of collateral are all activities that can demonstrate how sales-ready a lead is. After leads become marketing-qualified, sharing this lead score with sales reps can help them to determine which leads they should reach out to first.

Create Vertical-Specific Content

If your business has particular industries or buyer personas that you are routinely selling to, marketing can help reps close more deals by creating content that is targeted at that vertical. For example, say you sell social media advertising software and regularly find yourself closing deals with nonprofits. You could create content specifically showing ways that you can help nonprofits with their fundraising efforts.

Provide Sales Reps with Contextual Content Suggestions

As you’re creating a library of content (blogs, ebooks, etc.), it’s important to make sure that sales reps are aware of which content can help them close various sorts of deals. There are different ways to do this. One way is to create a spreadsheet that lists content that’s appropriate for various deal stages or verticals.  There are also third party tools that can provide reps with contextual content suggestions.

Looking for more ways to enable your sales team? Check out our free guide to creating a culture that enables sales!