Enabling Sales and Marketing Personnel
One thing your MSP business needs to do is ensure that the way in which you manage the “buyer’s journey” is harmonious between diverse departments. The buyer’s journey is steps associated with awareness, consideration, and conversion. Where there is most often a disconnect is in “conversion”, owing to improper communication between sales and marketing.
Notable Tactics for Aligned Outreach
It’s necessary to assure all promotions are properly communicated to varying departments, it’s important to understand associated budgets between departments, and there needs to be some level of price flexibility for negotiation as regards “big ticket” clients. The following tips should help:
Include Management for Salespeople and Marketers in Meetings on New Promotions
If you’re doing a new promotion, if you’re onboarding a new service to deliver, or if you’re changing pricing structures, you need leadership from sales as well as marketing on board. Everyone needs to know what the changes will be, what sort of customers will be “grandfathered in”, as it were, and any other relevant information.
One thing that tends to happen is that sales will have a promotion which is no longer available, but marketing might still be pushing it in outreach materials. Also, sometimes customers come to sellers with a deal that ended years ago. Your MSP needs to anticipate and properly manage such situations.
Consult with Marketing and Sales to Find Areas of “Static” Inhibiting Conversion
A good idea for your MSP business is to conduct investigations as a means of finding relevant KPIs pertaining to operational issues. Sometimes marketing is in the business of advertising a service package you no longer offer, which infuriates salespeople, as simple sales are getting lost.
Sometimes salespeople are refusing to honor new options, which in turn invalidates marketing promises. Essentially, figure out where there are disconnects between departments and fix those disconnects.
Seek Exterior Consultation from MSP Marketing and Sales Groups
Consultants who work with MSPs regularly can examine your business as a means of helping you determine where operations are working as they should, and where they could stand some improvement. External marketing and sales groups have a perspective that tends to be more informed than yours for the same reason someone looking at you has a better idea of your profile than you do, even if you study your reflection in a mirror.
Keeping Everybody Informed on Operational Changes
For almost every MSP business, there is a high potential for disconnect between sales and marketing departments. Many ways to remedy this exist, we have explored three here: seeking external consultation, internally consulting with marketing as well as sales to identify disconnects affecting profitability, and ensuring both departments are apprised of changes in sales or outreach structure from the very beginning.
