You may have read my past blogs on how I think that customers are your best resource for insights into how you should promote your brand. When you ask them the right questions, they’ll tell you all you need to know.
While direct contact with customers is very important, I’ve also learned that your sales team is a great source of customer insights. These are the people who spend the most time with customers. They hear first-hand what problems customers are trying to solve with your product or service and how they communicate those problems. They can tell you the lingo customers are using. A sales team can also give you insights into how customers perceive your product or service. There may be certain objections that your sales team addresses on a regular basis or, conversely, a specific feature that always resonates with customers. Sales people can also tell you what marketing messaging is working and what is not.
When I took over the marketing for our three assisted living and skilled nursing communities at LSS, there was very little interaction between the marketing team and the in-house sales managers. While the marketing team managed their digital channels and created most of the marketing materials, the sales managers created their own sales materials and ignored a lot of the approved marketing messaging. As a result, our messaging was confusing, disjointed, and misleading. Our target families did not understand the services we provided and our brand was suffering.
I started having regular meetings with the sales team and we worked together to revamp the marketing and sales materials so they were consistent and brand-right. But above all, the materials addressed the concerns of our target families so they see how we could help them. The collaboration strengthened the brand and gave the sales team a boost. They felt like they had an impact in our brand messaging and that empowerment translated into better performance.
Our collaboration was especially critical during the pandemic. The lockdown was especially hard on our senior living facilities. Our occupancy levels dropped to historic lows and it was increasingly difficult to bring in new residents when they couldn’t tour the community. And then once the lockdown ended, there were still safety protocols in place that were important to communicate to target residents. While I created the agency communications about our response to the pandemic, I would not have been able to effectively use it in sales materials without our sales team. They were the people who were hearing what was most important to our target families. For example, my team assumed that potential residents would be most concerned about our staff wearing PPE. However, our sales team reported they were more worried about when and how their family could visit. That information was extremely valuable in creating effective advertising and marketing materials.
The typical disconnect between the sales and marketing team can be very damaging to your brand. I think these teams should work together to create messaging that works for both functions and that the hand-off between MQL and SQL should be warm and ongoing. When sales and marketing works together you have a more accurate customer persona to work with and will attract more qualified leads. Collaboration makes both teams successful.
