It’s Marketing’s Job to Sell, Too

Partner Content

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You pursued a career in marketing for a reason. You’re a free-thinking creative who excels at understanding what people want, and you obsess over what your customers and prospects need from you and your company. 

Sales reps, like you, obsess over delivering the best outcome to a prospect or customer. Sales reps, like you, benefit from your wild campaign ideas. That’s because at the end of the day, we’re all responsible for selling and generating revenue in many cases regardless of your role at your organization. 

There are a few ways for you to be able to help support your sales team even more than you already are just by being you. 

Be There for Your Sales Team

This may seem really obvious, but there’s a reason for why it’s worth saying again. You’re already doing this on principle, but are you actually doing everything you can to serve your sales allies? A better question: how do you know if you are or are not?

The answer, again, is a simple and obvious one: communicate (and over-communicate) with sales. Call/Slack/Teams/text them and chit-chat about their day. Which deals fell through and why? Which deals did they win and why? When we all go back to normal work life, pick up your laptop and sit near a different sales rep at least once a week.

Once you’ve built those relationships, it’ll come more naturally over time and you’ll begin to understand and deliver their needs. 

Snoop on Sales Calls

If you’ve done everything described above, then you’ve done a lot of listening and responding to what sales has experienced. This will give you the basis for what you need, but sales still serves as the middle ground in this scenario.

There’s nothing quite like actually hearing straight from the customer/prospect. What’s keeping them from saying yes? Which pain points do they see on a daily basis, and how can you help deliver those solutions to them? When you can answer these questions, your audience will be able to feel the authentic transparency and personalization in your marketing because you’ll be responding to real-world challenges. 

Turn That Snoopery Into Content

Chances are that the more you communicate with sales and listen in on calls, the more you’ll begin to hear recurring objections, needs, and wants. These meaningful connections with sales, clients, and prospects will pay off in the form of high-value content. Morgan Ingram said it best in an impactful tweet:

“Your counterparts in sales often have a single one-on-one shot to make the sale. If they’re not armed with the right proof of value, that sale could end before it begins.

But a white paper, blog post, podcast episode, video, ad, or other collateral will create a proactive — and pre-emptive — evergreen response to any question or outstanding objective. Not only that, your well-curated content based on real feedback will reach a wide audience and garner real results, too.”