Sales and marketing professionals attend TOPO Summit to get actionable advice and examples for creating scalable revenue growth. They work towards better conversion rates, faster cycles, and bigger deals. Showpad Coach is sponsoring the conference and the Sales Effectiveness track so we can continue to help sales organizations tackle these goals more efficiently. Before attending the conference, brush up on a key part of sales effectiveness: sales messaging.
Even with the simplest of brands, sales messaging can get lost in translation. Without solid messaging to facilitate a clear value proposition to clients and prospects, it’s very difficult to achieve a high level of sales effectiveness.
If sales messaging isn’t consistent throughout the company and among sales reps, you and your customers are left with a completely different idea of who you are, and what you are selling or providing. Follow these three steps to improve communication and reap the benefits of a more effective sales organization.
1. Unify Your Sales Message
Your brand’s message can easily get lost if there aren’t clear boundaries and definitions set in place. Many companies struggle with this task because they forget their responsibility in providing the foundational training for better sales effectiveness.
Ideally, the onboarding and training you provide should produce sales reps with unified goals and messaging. It’s especially important for companies with complex products or services to have easily accessible resources with clear sales messaging.
Use the following tactics to review the current success and uniformity of your messaging:
- Talk to your sales reps. What do they think of the current marketing materials and brand messaging? Do they find them useful? Are there any changes they would make?
- Complete a survey. Survey different departments across your company to find out how they communicate the sales message and what it means. You may find that all of your departments suffer from some level of confusion.
- Ask your customers. Identify clients who champion your company and ask them for honest feedback on your sales messaging. Does the messaging help identify their challenges? Does the communication they received match the products or services delivered? Is there room for improvement?
- Connect your sales and marketing teams. Getting these two teams to talk will produce better quality resources. Get them in a room and brainstorm how they can better communicate your brand and offerings.
Once you’ve collected valuable feedback, put it to good use. Your sales team can’t improve their sales effectiveness without a solid messaging foundation, and it’s up to you to create it.
2. Solidify Sales Effectiveness Through Training Certifications
As your sales messaging evolves, it’s critical that you proactively keep your team updated and trained on changes. You’ll also want to incorporate new information into your formal onboarding program so new reps are trained properly from the beginning.
Leverage sales certification and coaching platforms, like Showpad Coach, to certify that the team not only learned the message, but can actually communicate it consistently.
Here are examples of appropriate times to hold formal training sessions for your sales reps:
- Differentiating your product from the competition
- Introducing a new product or service
- Adjustments to the company brand or messaging
- Development of new marketing collateral
- Significant client successes or mishaps
Because a lot of training surrounds new marketing collateral and how to differentiate your product, keep in mind that sales reps can provide valuable insight in the creation process and developing the right message. Choose a few sales professionals to get involved and you may generate more impactful results.
3. Match Your Messaging to Current Trends
The sales process is constantly evolving and it’s important to stay up-to-date on trends and adjust your messaging accordingly.
Keeping your brand message unified has become even harder due to the various methods your customers and potential customers can learn about your business. Your organization must coordinate messaging through your website, content creation, lead generation tools, social media, online resources, and sales rep interactions.
There are several ways you can prepare and empower your reps to improve sales effectiveness in the new technology landscape:
- Keep sales connected with marketing updates. Encourage your marketing team to send updates when they publish content, a website update, or any other new changes. This will help your sales reps stay up-to-date on the newest messaging, and be prepared if their client mentions something they’ve seen.
- Train your sales reps on social media. Your sales reps represent your organization when they interact on social media, particularly on professional networks, like LinkedIn. Have your marketing team or a professional service provide formalized training to help sales reps maximize their success on social media.
- Encourage your sales reps to become thought leaders. The best way to keep sales engaged in your brand messaging, is to actually get them involved in content creation. By publishing their own industry insights alongside your brand, they will build their own reputation and boost your brand’s efforts too.
- Complete regular client audits. Your sales leaders should auditing client interactions on a regular basis. Showing up for a sales appointment can not only make a good impression with a potential client, but it can also provide a great opportunity to check on your sales reps understanding of your brand messaging as well.
Unifying your sales messaging, solidifying training with certifications, and staying ahead of trends will help boost your sales effectiveness and organizational success. Your sales team cannot produce effective results without a great sales messaging foundation, and it’s up to you to make it happen.
