Sales Hacker brought three industry brains together to curate a list of sales tips derived from marketing professionals. It’s almost orthodox that marketing and sales don’t see eye to eye, but Lavall Chichester, Rand Fishkin, and Scott Barker are here to shake things up.
Before we dive into the webinar takeaways, we want to give you a free ticket to JumpCon. Lavall Chichester and Rand Fishkin will be speaking on digital sales transformation. The conference will take place in Nashville, TN on October 24th.
For a FREE ticket, use code SHWVIP.
After tuning in to the webinar, my notes reflect six key sales tips:
- Great marketers have empathy. Get some empathy.
- Marketers are great storytellers. Tell stories instead of selling packages.
- Sales and marketing can align. Believe in the alignment and want the alignment.
- Marketers understand analytics or the, “why”, that creates the opportunity for a sale. Gain that skill.
- Don’t overcomplicate stuff. Stop using jargon.
- Learn to build your own collateral. Exercise that right brain.
Sales Tip #1: Get Some Empathy
$5 fee for empathy.
Let’s start with Rand. He began the webinar by stating that, “the thing that makes marketers great is empathy. They have a deep understanding of their customers and their audience.” Explaining further, he said that salespeople rarely spend time with an audience who is uninterested. Why would they? Lead qualifying is a huge part of the job. Time is money, baby.
See, the difference is that as a marketer, the people initially uninterested in your product are the ones you spend the most time understanding. And that folks, requires empathy. A lot of it. And patience, a lot of patience.
Lavall thinks that “natural curiosity and the need/want to solve the clients’ problem” is what makes a good salesperson—a little understanding, or empathy if you will. We’re all on the same page.
Sales Tip #2: Tell Stories
On the topic of whether it’s a problem that salespeople stereotype their customers, Scott said, “you have to get your buyer out of the assumed feeling of going down the funnel path.” This makes a ton of sense. Your prospect doesn’t want to feel like a prospect. They want you to cater to them, understand them, and tell them a story about how your product solves their problem. You know, the problem that you found through listening and asking the right questions.
Rand then chimed in with this gem of a quote:
“Product knowledge and sales process knowledge is not enough. One of the ways to escape that is to be original, novel, and authentic. You can’t fake it, it’s not a template. That’s what you need to win as a salesperson today.”
Speaking of authenticity, Rand brought up the trendy topic that civilians are falling for #ads instead of advertisements nowadays. So, why would someone pay more attention to an influencer than a salesperson who has a vast knowledge of the product or service? Simply put (by Rand), “there’s an element of personality, authenticity, and disruption.”
Lavall’s two cents? “Marketers figured this out a while ago which is why they started investing in brands. That’s why a kid on YouTube is more appealing because I understand their brand.”
To sum up storytelling, they all agreed that great brands are built on stories and great salespeople should have that too. “Great marketers tell a story all the way through their funnel.” -Mr. Fishkin
Sales Tip #3: SALES AND MARKETING CAN ALIGN
This one is in caps because I’m yelling at you.
Scott tasked Lavall with this lofty Q: “What things would marketers love sales folks to know?”
Short answer? Lavall wants world peace. Long answer? He wants sales and marketing to know that alignment is possible. Lavall knows this because in his 11-ish months at JumpCrew, all sales and marketing egos have been removed and JumpCrew is aligned. He credits having the same goals across lead gen and sales as well as collaborating.
Scott pointed out that there should never be a time that sales wins and marketing loses (and vice versa). Shared KPIs are vital. Share credit and give credit. None of this greedy, petty shit.
Alignment conclusion:
“If marketing gets bad leads, sales sells whatever they want. Marketing gets the misaligned client and can’t meet expectations.” -Lavall
Sales Tip #4: Understand Analytics
This topic came about from Scott’s lead-in: “What can individual reps implement from a marketing organization?”
Lavall would recommend learning analytics tools. If you’re blessed enough to be granted access to a prospects GA, they just opened the door for you to poke holes in their marketing strategy (if you know how to find them). There’s a strategy behind his methods though. You see, if you’re reading this, you likely already have a pretty good understanding of sales. If you’ve mastered one skill, you’re ready to build on that skill.
“Don’t try to learn everything at once because you’re going to fail. Learn a skill then connect another skill so that they compound over time and become more impactful.” -Lavall
Touching on the empathy section, learning analytics forces you to get a framework of understanding your prospect’s problems. Lavall left listeners with this: “If you gain that as a skill and are good at selling, you’ll be able to sell anything.”
Sales Tip #5: Don’t Overcomplicate It
Coming from a sales background, Scott saw how concise marketing teams are with their copy. His recommendation? “Write down the value prop and take out the excess words. Act like you’re talking to a 6-year-old.”
This habit was brief but important, like good copy.
Sales Tip #6: Learn To Create Collateral
To build his personal brand, Scott started being present in different LinkedIn groups and communities. Why is this necessary? Because people want the personality, authenticity, and disruption of a real person being behind a thought or recommendation. Que Yelps’ success and the rise of micro-influencers.
Here are some tools to learn, they’ll help you create super easy, quick, and legit collateral.
– Canva
– Soapbox
– Wistia
Conclusion
Last but not least, here are things the brains said that didn’t fit into a section but lend to the topic.
– “Get to know each other’s processes. Tell people your process so that when they come to you with ideas and you have to shut them down, it’s not considered “mean” it just genuinely doesn’t work” -Lavall
– “Two of the channels that are under-invested in and can bring quick, high-value returns are guest appearances on big YouTube channels (a ton of engagement and branded search) and podcasts. They’re listened to a ton and crazy under-invested in. Assuming you have something interesting to contribute, of course.” -Rand
– “On updates in sales and marketing: “The death of the click. You look at the comments and who liked it but you don’t click. Therefore, you must convey the message quickly in the title of your video, etc. and in the snippet. This is how you control what is learned from your posts in the modern era.” -Rand
– “Many times marketing things that you do like an appearance on a podcast or YouTube channel is hard to attribute to because they don’t click. However, Google trends will let you search spikes hour by hour so you can look at traffic during your podcast or webinar.” -Rand
If you’ve been influenced by this blog post. You might also want to attend JumpCon, The Sales Digital Transformation Summit.
For a FREE ticket, use code SHWVIP.
Read more:
B2B Sales – The Ultimate Cheat Sheet