Micheline NijmehAs a marketer, I’m a big believer in the value that marketing can provide sales teams. With messaging and content for multiple buyer personas, marketing delivers a strong foundation for the purchasing process. But, as someone who has worked in and with sales for a number of years, I also know sales must be able to take that messaging and tailor it based on a customer’s particular needs in order to close the deal.
Research just released from Aberdeen Group shows how the top performing organizations are gaining these insights to personalize a transformed customer journey. (See infographic below.) One of the keys to success has been identified as sales enablement. According to Aberdeen, by arming their sales reps with sales enablement tools, these organizations are:
Forging a stronger alignment between marketing and sales teams
These companies recognize that both marketing and sales teams have a stake when it comes to content development, management, and distribution. And by giving sales reps enablement tools to easily access and personalize buyer-facing content – from email messaging to collateral to case studies – they are getting big pay-offs with:
- 21% stronger lead acceptance rates
- 36% higher lead conversion averages
And that’s not the only way these organizations are getting ahead. Other approaches they pursue include:
- Personalizing the business story for every single customer (77% versus 45% laggard)
- Delivering insight into what content to use when and with whom (57% versus 9% laggard)
- Seeing what sales activity levels drive the most deals (33% versus 25% laggard)
To get the above insights, companies are using automated engagement tracking software (AETS) to look at past sales activities, and see how many dials, emails, conversations or appointments it takes for sales reps to meet their goals – to help them build successful, repeatable processes to close other deals.
Sales organizations are seeing key performance indicators (KPIs) such as a 50% better lead conversion rate (22% vs. 14) and a 14% stronger customer retention rate. Who doesn’t like those numbers?
I’m personally excited to see this research from Aberdeen as it definitely aligns with some of our findings with LiveHive’s own customers.
If you want to find out how personalized content and engagement can make a difference for your business, check out the full Aberdeen report .
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