Build Marketing Materials With Your Sales Team
A sales rep has a meeting tomorrow and needs something to leave behind. They search the team folder, find three versions of the same sales sheet, and cannot tell which one is current. So they open the file on their desktop, update it themselves, and send it to the prospect. No one is failing at the job. The trouble starts when every request for sales material is handled on its own, and nobody is responsible for keeping it current.
Bring Field Sales Into the Work
Sales leaders may meet with marketing regularly, but field reps get little time in the conversation. That leaves out the person who heard the buyer’s question.
Emergency response is a good example. Marketing hears buyers asking about the service and starts a sell sheet. The rep knows the questions have been about the after-hours contact, the service radius, and when someone can arrive. Operations needs to verify those answers. Until then, another general capabilities page will not help the rep answer the call.
A recurring working session can bring that knowledge into the process. It should include one strong rep from each sales team, the marketing person responsible for each area, and an appropriate sales leader. Operations, safety, or technical staff can join when the work requires their input. A smaller company may be able to make this part of an all-hands sales meeting. A larger team may need a separate monthly session.
Start with the next bid or sales project on the calendar. The reps can show where existing material falls short and explain what they have been hearing in the field. Marketing can bring the campaign results and drafts it is already working on. A paid campaign, for example, can draw plenty of traffic from ZIP codes the company cannot serve. The rep’s view of those inquiries matters more than the traffic number when the group decides where to run the campaign next.
If an outside partner runs those ads, the marketing lead can give them the service-area correction and tell sales what changed. At the next meeting, the group can look at where the new inquiries came from and hear from the reps whether any of those contacts were worth pursuing.
Follow the Sales Cadence
Marketing emails, sales emails, texts, phone calls, site visits, events, and social posts can each do a different job. They still need to fit the order in which the company is talking with a buyer. Reps should know when campaigns will reach their accounts, and marketing should know when a renewal call, visit, or proposal is coming up.
After a detailed booth conversation, the rep should be able to remove that contact from the event-wide introductory email and follow up personally. Otherwise, marketing sends an overview to someone who has already moved past the introduction.
Questions about collection days, carts, and resident communication can come up long before an RFP is released. The North Central Texas Council of Governments’ guidebook covers those service changes, and the Town of Northlake’s RFP asks for a transition plan and customer communication materials. If reps are already hearing concerns about a changeover, marketing and operations should be working through the answers with them, whether or not a proposal is due.
Build Materials Sales Can Trust
Sales reps should have approved material they can use without rebuilding it before each meeting. That does not mean handing everyone a script. The rep still needs to listen, choose what is relevant, and answer the person in front of them. They should not have to verify basic service details against another file.
An EHS rep should be able to send a training overview after a call without checking whether the course descriptions and instructor information are current. If those details change, the approved overview needs to change before another rep uses it. The same principle applies to sell sheets and proposal language: someone must own the facts after the first version is published.
Keep One Current Library
Put the current materials in one place sales already uses. Assign each item an owner and a review date, clarify when the piece is meant to be used, and archive the old version when the new one is ready. The working session gives reps a place to report what is missing from that library. Marketing can make the update and tell the team when it is available.
Review the Work Before It Goes Out
Bring the draft sell sheet to the working session before reps start using it. If a claim about service or turnaround will raise questions the team cannot answer, fix it there. Marketing should also say what response it hopes to learn from the piece. Once reps have used it, bring their reactions back to the next meeting and decide what needs to change.
Kindelen Media builds sales-enablement materials and the communication systems around them for waste, environmental services, and EHS companies. If your reps are still making their own materials because they cannot find or trust what is available, connect with Kindelen Media to build support around the way your team actually sells.