Creating human-like interactions with customers in today’s world requires tight integration and goal alignment between the Marketing and Sales teams where each understands their company’s value, the customer’s unique needs, and how their company meets them better than anyone else.
From a Marketing perspective, the days of automatically providing drip marketing pieces to prospects, when “content was king” are long gone. Today, context is King and Queen. Marketing needs to understand the customer’s situation, their particular problems, and the why’s behind them looking for a solution. Then, they need to quickly pivot existing content and share it to meet the customer’s needs in a culturally acceptable way. This establishes Expertise, Authority, and generates Trust with customers (“EAT”). Doing this at scale requires micro-segmentation and advanced software to execute and create high-quality leads rapidly.
From a Sales perspective, the team must quickly engage the lead – usually within 24 hours. This could be via text bots, Business Development Rep’s video conferencing or webinars. Since different channels are popular with different people, don’t be afraid to engage beyond email or LinkedIn, such as via WhatsApp, text, Facebook, 1:1 video messaging, and more to see what works with each customer. When engaging, try to leverage available personality insights like those offered by CrystalKnows, IBM Watson Personality Insights, or others to maximize the efficacy of your communications.
However, not everything about engaging leads today is new and high tech. Like always, Sales must stay focused on the customer’s need (which may change throughout an engagement), the company’s value, and whether they are continuing to generate EAT in a way that helps the customer, or whether they are just gushing and pushing the lead away.
By working together to maintain relevance and using technology to engage and communicate in the way that a customer wants, Marketing & Sales teams create business interactions that drive revenue in a touchless, virtual business world