The business departments of marketing and sales have undergone a tremendous shift over the past two decades. It used to be both departments would act like wary opponents in a boxing ring, eying each other suspiciously and ready to throw the first punch when key performance indicators were brought up.

C-level executive: “Well, the sales numbers were down this quarter… it’s obvious they’re not getting enough leads from marketing.”

Marketing manager: “Hey, our people give leads from our website to the sales team!”

Sales account executive: (groaning under his breath) “Oh, sure. You give us leads but they’re not even close to a purchasing decision.”

Marketing manager: “Well why don’t you try doing your job, such as selling the prospect? You want a ready-made sale? Then call yourself an order-taker, not a sales professional!”

C-level executive: “Alright, everyone! Enough! Back to your corners!”

Marketing Dressed Like Sales

The Internet hasn’t improved the debate. Some companies used staff to set appointments for the sales teams or advertisement replies and passed the leads on to sales. Now we are using the Internet to do the same thing.

This is when it is vital to have powerful, persuasive copywriting in your marketing collateral.

Your business website and marketing assets (such as white papers, case studies, blog posts, data sheets, etc.) should be a mixture of content marketing that will engage a “seeker” who is in the beginning phase of a solution search—and solid persuasive copywriting that will prod your seeker to take action.

That action could be:

• Subscribing to receive a newsletter
• Signing up for a webinar
• Calling your company for more information
• Signing up for a demo
• Responding to an email to make an appointment
• Ordering an book, course, or other item

Sales and marketing need each other more than ever. Sales needs marketing to be more responsive in the sales cycle, which has become more complex in most organizations.

Marketing needs sales to communicate with them and identify key decision makers so they can create the marketing assets that will help guide the sales process.

Sales Dressed Like Marketing

Marketing needs to work with sales in defining the business driver for a prospect. Once that driver is identified (increasing lead conversion, decreasing operating costs, improving turnaround time, etc.), then they can create content that will position their company’s offering as the solution.

It is more important than ever to ask a prospect questions, probe for more information, and then confirm with them that you’ve heard them correctly. The more time you spend discovering what is important to your prospect, the easier it will be to create your marketing material.

Here are a few ideas for questions:

• What is your business objective?
• What are your current business challenges to that objective?
• What are some of the areas that need to be resolved in order for you to achieve your business objective?
• What do you think would be the solution for your problem?

The more you ask questions, the greater your understanding will be regarding the prospect’s perspective of the problem and then, if you can solve it for them.

Define the Prospect’s Problem

I think many times, business owners rush through their “investigative reporting” so they can immediately jump in with a solution. But you can’t really jump in if you don’t know thoroughly the pain or problem your prospect is dealing with.

About 70 – 80% of a long sales letter is defining the problem and the consequences of that problem. If your copy is good enough to hit on a prospect’s pain points, they’ll read it to the end to find a solution.

Sales and marketing need to work together and share information so marketing assets can align itself with the sales cycle.

Communicating with the sales force and learning what they know about the key decision makers can make the difference between developing copy for your business that gets more sales—or not.

Perhaps it’s time to call a truce and step out of the boxing ring and into the winner’s circle. Your business is depending on it.

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Photo credit: iwona_kellie / Foter / CC BY-NC-SA