Digital marketing and consistent sales and marketing processes is more important than ever for businesses. This can be especially key for principal-led companies with ‘do or sell’ roles as the principals seldom have time to sell because they are busy doing work or managing the business. Also, there are also many people at companies who are responsible for marketing activities in addition to their core competencies.
Take for example the two personas below who are both examples of a “do or sell” role:
John is the President & CEO of a company with under 50 employees and wants to generate new business and prospective clients. Due to the size of his company, much of the sales & marketing efforts to be done fall to John, who in turn doubles as the marketing director. But because John has so many additional responsibilities involved with his role and managing his business that oftentimes there isn’t enough time in the day for John to devote to business development. As John is unable to focus on developing business, what results is a limited pipeline for his sales team, who in turn have to spend time developing their own pipelines due to the limited leads. This trickle down effect means that sales personnel have to spend time on prospects who aren’t viable or cold calling.. What John and his team needs is to know when a prospect that fits their market is ready to buy.
Jill is an account manager at an engineering firm who needs to wear many hats. As a professional engineer with years of experience in the industry, Jill is responsible for the design and management of various projects which includes submitting responses to RFPs. In addition to her engineering responsibilities, Jill is also responsible for generating business from new and existing clients. As Jill is someone who is an engineer, she will typically prioritize her engineering responsibilities and responding to existing clients. Her duties as an account manager will fall behind, which will result in an inconsistent sales pipeline. Jill needs a way to qualify prospects at a basic level so that she is still able to complete her engineering duties, while not neglecting any of her marketing and sales responsibilities.
In both examples of the above personas, John and Jill need assistance in nurturing prospects throughout the sales process, but their companies aren’t ready to hire a full-time staff member assigned to filling and nurturing the sales funnel. Most of all, John and Jill need to use their time for presenting and closing, rather than marketing and developing opportunities.
The Answer:
A marketing expert for your industry can be available on a fractional basis, who will manage and continually optimize your sales and marketing using a combination of technology and best practices at a fraction of the cost of hiring (or using stretched thin existing marketing resources). This ‘embedded’ resource will be part of your team and be focused on directly growing your sales pipeline so your team can do what they do best – present and close deals.
ActiveConversion is home to leading digital marketing and advertising expertise who have helped hundreds of energy and industrial companies reach their goals. Find out more here: http://activeconversion.com/managed-services/