How Will Changing Your Marketing Actively Improve Your Sales Success?
Old & New Dogs… Tips & Tricks
The sales team was kind of broken into two different groups, the young guns, and the old guard.
The young guns saw some cool things and said, “Wow, I didn’t know it could do that, man. I can’t wait to try it.” And they ran out of the room and started doing things.
The old guard ended up saying, “Well, that’s cool, but that’s a lot of work and I don’t get this social media stuff, so I’m going to go back to the phone and email.”
In the end, both teams had the same result. They really didn’t use it long enough to see any measurable results. Today I want to talk about how changing your marketing will actively improve your sales success.
T.R.I.B.E.
A while back on The Bacon Podcast Episode 679, I talked about Dunbar’s number and the concept of TRIBE. Since then, I’ve decided to make TRIBE an acronym that stands for trusted, receptive, interesting, bountiful, expert. Your TRIBE and members of your TRIBE should have all of those features:
- Trusted – Do people know, like, and trust you, and have you gone through a know, like, and trust journey with them?
- Receptive – Are you available and engaging, and are they?
- Interesting – Do you have new perspectives and ideas? Can you gather them from your tribe?
- Bountiful – Are you rich in knowledge and network? Are you willing to share that?
- Expert – Have you or they achieved a level of success? Bottom line, are you walking the walk?
R.A.C.E.
In another podcast episode, 715, I joked about Critical Race Theory. But again… when I say the word RACE, I meant it as an acronym.
I define R.A.C.E. in marketing as four things:
- Relevance – Are you talking to someone as an individual and not just as a broad audience?
- Authority – Do you have the experience and perspective on a specific topic to be able to offer real-world experience and advice?
- Consistency – Are you actively and visibly engaged with people on a regular basis?
- Engagement -. Are you being responsive to interactions? Are you liking and commenting on other people’s likes and comments on your messages and vice versa? And are you paying attention to their messages?
Relevance and authority and consistency and engagement help you with the marketing need to win the sales R.A.C.E.
- Relevance leads to Relationships.
- Authority leads to Authenticity.
- Consistency leads to Commitment.
- Engagement leads to Execution.
In the sales race, relationship means – are you investing time in personal outreach? Are you having communications with that person? Authenticity means – are you being honest, open, and forthright with the person you’re communicating with? Commitment means – are you making promises and delivering on those promises? And then finally, execution means – are you getting the job done for that person? I’m sure they’re giving you bonus points for over-delivering.
Let’s recap that one more time. Marketing relevance leads to a sales relationship. Marketing authority will lead to sales authenticity, the ability to have a one-on-one communicative relationship. And marketing consistency will lead to the opportunity for you to have sales commitment. And finally, marketing engagement will lead to the opportunity for you to be able to execute in the sales process for your clients.
Gear Up
First Gear = Consistent Content Delivery.
You should be posting to social media at least three times a week, if not daily engagement, especially when it comes to people’s birthdays, anniversaries, or special events. You should also be emailing your tribe at least twice a week, the people that are on your email list. And you should have two different messages. Maybe something on a Tuesday, and something on a Thursday. The first could be repurposed content or an event, and the second should be a new piece of content.
Second Gear = Compelling Content Delivery.
When you’re sending out content, you should be sharing short, digestible bites. Don’t make anybody work too hard to consume your content. The goal with that is to create enough engagement to get a handful of readers to click through to your website if they want more detailed information.
Third Gear = Contextual Content Delivery.
As you accelerate through those three gears, you should start to segment and target your information specifically to unique people. That means you have to tag people into what industry they’re in, what they’re interested in, and feed them that specific info, not more of that buffet. The next piece of it is personalized emails from a relational standpoint. Your sales team or you as a salesperson should be sending out messages asking, “How are you doing,” and “How can I help you.”
Final Thoughts
The lesson that I learned when I was doing that LinkedIn training is that you can teach and learn tools, tactics, and tips, but in order to win the sales race and experience sales success, you have to win the marketing race first. This means that even though I can’t teach outreach, I can help nudge you along just a little bit first.
Marketing and sales need to be intertwined!
I would love to hear your thoughts on reaching out and connecting to create conversations. Are your marketing and sales intertwined? Comment below and share your thoughts, ideas, or questions about connecting with others to improve sales success.
