Business Growth Blog

When sales and marketing teams are aligned, sales pipelines are larger, and customer conversion rates are higher, putting companies on the fast-track to growth. After all, both sellers and marketers want to communicate with the same people and achieve the same end-goal: new sales. It seems like a no-brainer, right?

One of the biggest challenges businesses face is that finding and engaging potential customers is becoming increasingly technical and complex, and it’s all too easy to waste money on strategies that don’t get the desired results.

One of the biggest problems businesses face is figuring out what to say to take a prospect from “Who the heck are you?” to “I want to do business with you!”

How do you get on your prospects’ radar and capture their interest? The first step is to clearly understand your buyer journey. The second step is to create and promote the type of information prospects need at each stage.

Most websites are set up for prospects near the end of the sales cycle. They're focused on driving prospects to "contact" the company in some way (demo, trial, consultation, etc.). But, not everyone that comes to your site is ready to jump actively into the sales process. They just want more information about their problem and possible solutions. They want to self-educate so that when they do end up talking to a salesperson, they can feel more confident about what is going on.

If you're not providing content that's aligned with all the stages prospects go through to make a purchasing decision, you're limiting your opportunities and opening the door for your competitors to snatch up good potential customers.

Read more to see an example of how to align your website content with each stage of the sales cycle.

There’s a widening gap between the way prospects buy, and companies sell. Prospects are using Internet research to self-educate through the first two-thirds of the sales process, but the majority of corporate websites and marketing strategies are entirely focused on the late stages of the sales cycle. Unfortunately, this approach puts companies at a huge disadvantage.

Read more to find out how to position your website and marketing strategies so you can engage prospects as early as possible in the sales cycle, have more influence over their buying decision, and get on their short list of potential vendors.

Salespeople are on the front lines interacting with prospects and customers all day long. They should be driving what content marketing creates for lead generation. I recently did just that and generated about 70 sales leads in one month. Here's an example of how I did that:

Content Idea Generated Through Sales

One of my customers recently asked me if I had a blog template or some resources to help him start writing articles. I do have a solid process for that of course, but it wasn't a resource I made available online. I have a ton of articles on my website about blogging as well, but none of them are the actual "process".