Finding a Keynote Speaker Who Gets Both Sales and Marketing
Traditionally, sales and marketing departments have distinct structures, leadership, budgets, and goals. This can lead to feuds between the two sectors in many companies. Marketers claiming salespeople waste their hard-earned MQLs by not thoroughly following up, and salespeople retort that the leads being handed to them “stink.”
The above image is representative of a more modern look at sales and marketing: two faces of the same construction, perhaps with slightly different viewpoints and with the same overall goal. And that is to drive revenue, the lifeblood of any business, working together as a cohesive unit.
A sales and marketing keynote speaker who understands this and can speak to both audiences can add a lot of value to today’s sales and marketing teams as the traditional lines of demarcation slowly erode.
Sales and marketing roles getting blurred
It used to be that marketers designed a campaign to reach the most eyes and ears possible using print publications, radio, television, and direct mail. Once leads came in, it was obvious that salespeople should now take over since marketers knew how to attract, not close.
Then came the internet, and everything started changing. Salespeople began to market themselves as individual brands through blogs and social media and could thereby bypass the official marketing team in getting leads. Conversely, marketers increasingly found themselves nurturing visitors through the funnel, doing some of the relationship-building traditionally done by sales before a lead could be deemed “qualified” enough for sales to step in.
As a sales and marketing keynote speaker, I must strike a delicate balance between acknowledging the current separation in the sales and marketing roles and delivering this message: if you want to stay relevant, you need to learn some of the skills of the other department for your own job. Many don’t want to hear this!
What future sales and marketing jobs will look like
I believe that the advent of content marketing and social platforms has made everyone a mini media empire. Marketing and media have melded, and I think that PR and sales will join the mix.
This marketer/PR/salesperson hybrid of the near future will be expected to create and distribute media assets powered by data science, create press releases and stage PR events, and move the leads along until the order is taken – increasingly by themselves. After all, they will know exactly how the lead came in, what they viewed, what triggered positive action, and have deep insight into what makes the prospect tick. Might as well close them too! I think a good sales and marketing keynote speaker will prepare his audiences for this upcoming reality.
Thanks for taking the time to read this post. Before I let you go, I wanted to share something exciting!
Last month, I and a few members of my executive team appeared on the Fox Business Network’s “Worldwide Business with Kathy Ireland” as sponsored content. With more than 6,000 companies participating in over 1,000 episodes, the show is a leading source for the latest in business and health.
In addition to appearances by several of our customers, we also give a few sales tips and explain our “why,” which really clarifies what we do and the reason we do it.
Have a watch – it’ll only take a few minutes:
