September 17, 2024

Beyond Lead Generation: The Role of Marketing in Sales Enablement

By:

Ari Cignarale

Co-Founder & CEO

Nomad

Marketing’s role in supporting the sales team has evolved far beyond lead generation. Today, marketing must actively contribute to sales enablement by providing the tools, content, and insights that help sales teams engage prospects, overcome objections, and close deals.

This expanded role requires close collaboration between the two departments to ensure marketing efforts align with the needs of sales throughout the entire sales cycle.

How Marketing Supports Sales Enablement

1. Develop Buyer-Centric Content

Marketing should create a range of content assets tailored to the buyer’s journey. This includes blog posts, whitepapers, case studies, product demos, and objection-handling guides. Sales teams can use this content to educate prospects and move them closer to a purchase decision.some text

Challenge: Creating content that sales teams find useful.

Solution: Involve sales early in the content creation process by soliciting their input on common buyer objections, product benefits, and key messaging. This will ensure that the content addresses real sales needs.

2. Provide Data-Driven Insights

Marketing collects valuable data on how leads interact with content, websites, and campaigns. Sharing this data with sales allows them to tailor their conversations with prospects based on specific interests and behaviors.some text

Challenge: Marketing data not being leveraged by sales.

Solution: Automate the delivery of insights from your marketing automation platform to your CRM so that sales teams have visibility into what content prospects have engaged with before entering the sales pipeline.

3. Align Messaging Across Teams

Consistency in messaging is key to building trust with prospects. Marketing and sales should work together to create a shared messaging framework that ensures both teams are communicating the same value propositions, product benefits, and customer outcomes.some text

Challenge: Inconsistent messaging between marketing campaigns and sales conversations.

Solution: Establish regular content reviews to ensure that sales teams are aware of the latest messaging, campaigns, and product updates.

Equip Sales with Real-Time Content

Marketing can support sales teams by ensuring they have easy access to up-to-date content and resources. This might involve building a centralized content library or using a content management system that integrates directly with the sales team’s CRM.some text

Challenge: Sales teams struggle to find or use the right content.

Solution: Build a content repository within the CRM that allows sales to access the right materials at the right time based on the buyer’s stage in the funnel.

Key Metrics to Monitor

  • Content Engagement Rates: Track how often sales reps are using marketing-provided content in their outreach and sales conversations. High engagement suggests the content is valuable and relevant to prospects.
  • Sales Win Rates with Marketing-Engaged Leads: Measure the win rate of deals where prospects have interacted with marketing content. This provides insight into how well marketing materials are supporting sales outcomes.
  • Time-to-Close for Marketing-Engaged Leads: Leads that engage with marketing content often move faster through the pipeline. Monitoring the time-to-close for these leads helps evaluate how effectively marketing is contributing to deal velocity.
  • Sales Feedback on Content: Implement a feedback system where sales can rate the effectiveness of marketing-provided content. This feedback loop ensures continuous improvement in the types of content marketing creates.

Ari Cignarale

Co-Founder & CEO

Nomad

Ari started Nomad with the mission to change both consulting and marketing operations. She decided consulting shouldn’t be billed by the hour, and Nomad became the first consulting firm to utilize a monthly subscription model. Ari believes this has created Nomad’s unique culture, and that it will be the future of consulting. Ari focuses on all things growth, and continues to create place for Nomad in the marketing operations departments at all companies, as well as in the consulting world.

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