Teach Your Sales Team To Think Like a Marketer

The tug-of-war between a "close the deal" mindset and “campaign strategies” is classic.

But no, don’t just bridge the gap. Totally erase it. 

As the book Duct Tape Selling: Think Like a Marketer-Sell Like a Superstar by John Jantsch reveals:

The secret trick to achieving greater success in B2B selling: Integrating marketing principles into the sales process.

(And we couldn’t agree more.)

In other words, grab your marketing thinking caps and your bold sales attitudes…

…and let's list down the mindset commonly associated with marketers that your sales team should bring into their process.

What to steal from marketers’ minds:

#1. Relying on data to refine sales strategies

Yup, you can frame it as a marketing alchemy. It’s because marketers thrive on data and analytics to refine their strategies. And you can apply this “magic” to your sales approach.

Empower your sales team with analytical skills to leverage data for more informed decisions, smarter targeting, and identifying potential leads more effectively. 

• Make them track their interactions
• Measure what works
• And fine-tune tactics based on real-world insights.

🔥Hot tip: Don’t use the target revenue as sales productivity metrics. Break down the goals into weekly milestones and track them instead. Here's a short guide to setting effective sales goals.

#2 Infuse storytelling into your sales team's repertoire.

Admit it or not, marketers are adept at weaving captivating stories. And most of these stories evoke emotions and then inspire action. Teach your sales team to do this too!

By infusing storytelling into your sales team's toolbox, they can captivate prospects and create memorable connections.

Remember, people don't just buy. But rather, they invest in experiences that’ll solve their problems.

Work with marketers on sales decks, outreach messages, and even sales emails. They have a knack for creating visually appealing, emotionally resonant content, and that's precisely what your sales presentations need.

🔥 Hot tip: Use UpLead’s data intent to match your storytelling with their current needs or desires.

UpLead is powered by Bombora for intent data. So, on top of just gathering data, you get intent data that gives you clues on what’s paining them right now and what they’re looking for. 

PSA: The data are directly gathered with permission from Bombora's exclusive data source.

Check out the video below to see how this works. 

#3 Don't just sell products. Sell ideas, expertise, and authority. 

Content is King—even for sales too!

So, take inspiration on how marketers build thought leadership.

They consistently deliver valuable content (like thought-provoking LinkedIn content) that educates and inspires their audience.

Your sales team can do this by sharing insightful articles, whitepapers, or videos that establish them as experts, driving prospects to view them as trusted advisors.

And did you know some companies encourage their employees to share industry insights and become their in-house influencers?

“Recruitment experts say building in-house influencers is a smart strategy at a time when companies are being challenged to tell their story in authentic ways.”

• Intuit encourages its employees to post about their work experiences.
• Cisco trains its employees to help as talent influencers, for example, by helping them build their LinkedIn profiles to attract talent.
• Ericsson helps employees get Ericsson-branded content that they can share or submit for their colleagues to share.

🔥 Hot tip: Go the extra mile and start writing value content. Share your insider insights, practical tips, and industry trends that your audience can't find anywhere else.

Here’s our Founder & CEO, delivering immense value with his LinkedIn post.

#4 Seize the critical moments when it matters most.

This is a cliché—in the digital era, attention spans are short. And marketers know this. They understand the significance of micro-moments or those critical instances that influence decision-making. 

They’re little joys that result from solving little problems. Whether it's a prompt reply to a query, a quick demo on how your company solved a related prospect problem in the past, or a helpful resource shared exactly when needed, nailing those micro-moments is a surefire way to attract and keep customers.

Therefore, you should go and borrow this page from the marketer's playbook.

🔥Hot tip: You can use micro-moments principles on your sales calls. 

Think about the impact of optimizing micro-moments that directly affect your sales team's efficiency. 

And here at UpLead, we did offer the right information at the right time. That made it easier for us to land a $200,000 deal. 

We share the exact cold call script and cold email template we used in this video:

#5 Know thy customer!

Ever seen a marketer without their trusty buyer persona? Not sure about that because marketers thrive on personalization. 

In that case, empower your sales team to apply personalized strategies, like tailored emails and custom follow-ups, for deeper engagement and stronger relationships. The better you understand them, the more tailored your sales pitch becomes.

🔥Hot tip: Ask marketers to help you with the copy and use UpLead to gather personalization info. 

You can also choose to use technographic data to develop hyper-targeted audiences, recognize customer pain points, and personalize your outreach.

Here’s how you can use UpLead to supply technographic data:

You can target prospects based on their technology stacks. And we’re currently tracking over 16,000 technologies like CRM and analytics.

Selling smarter through marketing thinking 

When you guide your sales team to think like marketers, they're not just selling. They are now nurturing, providing solutions, and offering value while as always building relationships, 

Empowering your sales team to understand the prospects deeply is like turning every interaction into opportunities to showcase your solutions.

Complement this strategic move by providing your sales team with accurate prospecting. A sales intelligence tool like UpLead helps you arm your team with high-quality leads right from the start.  

The UpLead Bulletin

The Outbound Sales Insider is powered by UpLead, the #1 Ranked Lead Intelligence Software

🔥What’s new in UpLead:

• Our Chrome extension now works with Sales Navigator and Recruiter.

🔥 Exciting product changes (coming soon):

• AI management filter - The new AI model gives you more contacts with accurate management-level attributes, arming you with the confidence to engage with them.
• Asynchronous downloads - Now you can export big lists in the background. Go on with your work and you’ll be notified when your download is ready.
• Standardized industry filter - Searching by industry is now more efficient. You’ll see an increase in the number of companies with an industry categorization.
• Contacts by skills - Our AI models can accurately predict a contact’s skill set. This means that you’ll soon find contacts with the exact skills you’re looking for.

These are NOT released yet, but our dev team is working on them.

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