What’s faster than a squirrel with a nice big nut in its sights? Other than Volkswagens (I really did try to stop) and ambitious dogs, the Internet comes to mind.
Last week we tackled the sad truth about B2B content: most of it (60-70%) goes unused by sales teams. There a few reasons for this, chief among them is that marketers are pretty terrible at helping their sales teams understand what the content is supposed to do.
I think there’s a second reason, and it’s got to do with marketing hanging about in the trees.
Things used to work in a lovely, linear way. Marketing would generate a bunch of leads, toss them to a sales rep and the rep would scamper around like a squirrel, grabbing the good nuts and finding a safe place to store them while the sales cycle moved along.
And all of this was just fine when sales was the primary delivery channel for content. But that was then. These days, marketers are inviting themselves to the party, and showing up weeks or months ahead of sales, with a giant casserole full of white papers, webinars and infographics.
When the first and even the second contact with a customer is done by the marketing department, you can hardly blame the sales squirrels for being a little snitty about the whole thing.
What’s worse is that most of our sales training is predicated on the traditional sales cycle where sales makes the first contact. In this scenario, calls are made, lunches are eaten, presentations are delivered and content is thoughtfully deployed throughout, at just the right points to move stuff along.
Pity the poor squirrel who shows up with a freshly baked case study, only to find the same content snoozing contentedly on the desktop, having appeared the week before in a blog post or as the call to action in a newsletter banner.
It’s not just a little embarrassing, it’s also costly to our sales squirrel, since marketing isn’t equiped to do sticky things like closing business; we’re there to educate, build credibility and add all kinds of value. The furthest thing from our minds is actually selling something.
This is where sales begins to wonder what the point of all that content really is. If all the content is doing is filling up the prospect’s inbox, then it really isn’t adding any value, and it’s in the profound interest of the squirrel to bury it in a planter. If content is disintermediating the squirrels, then there’s a good chance it’s probably killing off the sales cycle to boot.
Oops.
The solution, Lords and Ladies of the Spin Cycle, is pretty simple. On the sales side, we need to look at our selling cycle models and include the reality of a marketing first touch, and subsequent interventions into the whole thing.
On the marketing side, we need to stop shoveling long enough to have an agreeable talk with our friends in sales about what’s going out the door to their accounts, and whether the substance and the timing are actually helping.
Now if only the content was worth looking at in the first place.
Related Links:
Hook, Line & Whitepaper: Why Content Needs to Know Its Place
Lost Squirrels: Putting Sales Where it Belongs
BizMarketer is Elizabeth Williams
You can reach me at escwilliams@gmail.com
or follow me on Twitter @bizmkter
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