Strong product messaging helps position your company for success, and your sales reps to close more deals. Product marketing teams are in charge of creating content and information that sales teams can use to articulate product functionality and value to prospects.
They focus on solving for the following:
- Who is the right target for your product?
- What benefits do you offer?
- What pain points are your customers experiencing?
- What problem does your product fix?
- What differentiates your product?
However, even with their dedicated research and expertise, there can be a disconnect between messaging created by product marketing teams, and what your reps actually need to sell.
When sales and product marketing teams aren’t strongly aligned, messaging gaps leave deals on the table. A lot of deals in fact.
When organizations have closely aligned sales and marketing teams for content creation they see 21% better lead acceptance rate, and 36% higher conversion rates.
Help get your teams work together better and close more deals by exploring these common sales and product marketing challenges and solutions:
Mismatched Content & Buyer Personas
Problem
Content made available to sales is too general. While these broad content formats are applicable to a wide range of prospects, sales reps often need messaging tailored to specific scenarios to close deals.
Solution
Have product marketing and sales teams work together to create buyer personas that are relevant to your sales reps, and determine how messaging can be more tailored to personas without creating endless versions for each lead. We suggest choosing a limited number of personas so the versions are manageable.
Content is Difficult to Find
Problem
Even when product marketing teams push out great sales resources, it can be difficult to find when needed. If sales reps can’t find them easily, they won’t waste time trying to find them. Sales reps need to spend as much time selling as possible to hit quotas and stay successful in their roles.
Solution
Help your product marketing and sales teams connect more easily by creating one universal system to store sales collateral that’s accessible from anywhere. Having a mobile friendly repository will encourage your reps to use content to their advantage, even on the go.
Lack of Personalization
Problem
In a world where almost everything can be customized at the drop of a hat, prospects expect personalized sales collateral. When sales reps can’t customize sales content created by product marketing teams, they often try and piece together their own resources. The result is usually a non-impressive frankenstein version of the original.
Solution
Have your product marketing team shadow sales to see exactly where their personalization needs are. Then, have them create customizable resources where only certain aspects of the content can be changed.
Content Addresses the Wrong Funnel Step
Problem
Even if sales and product marketing are analyzing the same sales funnel, they may be seeing an entirely different picture. Product marketing might focus their content creation resources one on stage of the sales funnel, when sales reps really need additional resources in a different one.
Solution
Sit your sales and product marketing teams down together to flush out what actually happens at each state of the funnel. Have them address where current content gaps are, and what types of resources could fix the problem.
Throughout all the common product marketing messaging problems above, the underlying factor is communication. Getting your marketing and sales teams to work together in a collaborative effort will lead to better content and more deals. It’s a relationship investment you can’t afford not to make.
