SALES CONTENT


Sales and Marketing Alignment in the New Virtual World


How should sales and marketing collaborate in the new virtual sales environment? We asked McKinsey Partner Michael Harney.


Q: Why must sales and marketing teams be tightly connected to co-create impactful sales content (marketing materials, collateral, supporting content reps use with clients)? A: COVID-19, as well as additional macro changes, has accelerated the digitization and convergence of marketing and sales. According to our latest B2B Pulse, we have seen significant changes with regard to customer buying preferences in the B2B decision journey. Today, specifically, omnichannel is the standard, not the exception. 94% view today’s B2B omnichannel reality – in which customers buy face to face, remotely, and online – as equally or more effective than before COVID-19. In the sales process, B2B decision makers now regularly use 10 or more channels to interact with suppliers, with e-commerce being the most utilized channel. All of these channels are capturing relevant data. As a result, marketing has far more data than ever before to generate relevant insights on how customers want to interact across the buying journey and the key buying factors that matter. Sales, however, has the closest relationship with customers to provide very tailored, specific interactions into what messages and moments matter most.


The power and magic of marketing and sales comes when marketing’s analytics and the sales team’s knowledge, interpersonal skills, and capabilities combine into a highly compelling and distinctive value proposition.


Q: What can sales and marketing learn from one another to improve the virtual buying process? A: Marketing plays a bigger role because there is now much more data due to an increase in online transactions. E-commerce sells products it never used to. Virtual sales tools capture data – moving far beyond basic CRM. As such,


marketers can analyze and generate more relevant, personalized insights. Marketers today have a deeper understanding of customer preferences for each interaction and which buying factors matter most, among other areas. For example, customers may say they care about price, but do they actually choose by price, or do they buy based on factors such as delivery, service, or relationships? Marketing can also provide sales much more competitive intelligence. Sellers have the close relationships and contacts


to provide tailored and very specific insights on what really matters to specific customers. That is important for any sale, but especially for consultative sales where individual preferences and buying preferences play potentially even bigger roles. Salespeople have to understand what is resonating most with customers. The power of sales and marketing is where these two capabilities converge.


Q: How can marketing best support sales, and vice versa, as we transition into hybrid selling? A: There are three key areas where marketing enables sales in a hybrid-selling environment. First, marketing helps salespeople decide where they should spend their time. Marketing can say which customers have the most profit potential, the most growth, the higher likelihood of a win. Sales faces a big pipeline of opportunities and must decide how to allocate time most efficiently for the highest ROI. Second, marketing can tell sales the critical moments when the customer is deciding whether to buy from you or a competitor – or whether to buy at all. Third, marketing can tell sales what seems to be working. Salespeople have a sense from conversations, but marketing can advise (based on hundreds or thousands of interactions) how to adjust pitch and pricing. Salespeople are still where the rubber meets


the road. They are driven by expertise and word of mouth. Best-in-class organizations are quite intentional about the feedback mechanisms between sales and marketing. The best marketers have spent time in sales, and the best salespeople have spent time in marketing. Sales benefits from learning the science of selling, and marketing learns the interpersonal elements – like buyers’ prior


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