Navigating MarTech: Optimizing Marketing/Sales Alignment and Enablement

05.17.2017 Mark Frisina
Optimizing Marketing and Sales Alignment and Enablement

How to Choose the Right Technology Solutions

Updated: June 1, 2023

As sales enablement evolves as a clearly defined business function, the necessity for marketing departments to align with sales teams becomes crucial.

Leading marketers are realizing that traditional methods of distributing content and collateral, such as email and network drives, are no longer viable. In fact, some industry experts estimate that sales personnel spend up to 30% of their time tracking down content or customizing it themselves.

Indeed, the market is awash with technology that enables sales teams with the content and tools needed to nurture customer relationships and increase closing opportunities.

Identify Best Practices for Aligning Marketing and Sales

The process of selecting your MarTech solution and vendor should be guided by a careful look at your organization’s sales and marketing goals. Identify where disconnects exist and define a set of best practices before you begin your search.

For example, Ruler identified several best practices of top-performing organizations regarding alignment of sales and marketing, including the following: 

  • Choosing software that works for your team 
  • Content creation for the whole sales funnel 
  • Utilize sales insight from closed sales 

When your sales and marketing teams are operating within the CRM, like Salesforce, the data they access is consistent and aligns with campaign progress and engagement activities.

Choosing Your Sales-Enabling MarTech and Vendor

The right MarTech system can help facilitate and de-silo the relationship between marketing and sales, even giving marketing departments the agility to help sales teams be nearly self-sufficient when it comes to accessing the content they need, when they need it.

Select a vendor who will work with you to design a system around your vision of what the user experience should be. In general, here are some of the top benefits a sales-enabling MarTech solution can provide:

  • Enable sales teams to access and customize content. With a central web-based marketing resource management portal to store content, marketing can connect the sales team with the most effective content for each part of the sales funnel. Also, the best content management tools will allow sales and marketing teams to track client engagement with content so they can collaborate on adapting it.
  • Allow marketers to retain control over branding and compliance. By eliminating the need for sales reps to re-create content they can’t find or that isn’t relevant, marketers can rest assured that there will be no misuse of the company brand or violation of compliance requirements in highly regulated industries.
  • Streamline distribution of collateral. Every step of the process, from ordering to fulfillment, can be centrally managed and automated to ensure that sales reps receive the right materials at the right time. Further, distributed local marketing solutions often provide online ordering and web2print capabilities. Sales teams can order materials in moments and have them shipped directly to them.
  • 24/7 on-demand access. Cloud-based platforms are ideal for sales enablement given the increase in working remotely, field sales, mobility and globalization. Online marketing portals mean sales can access what they need whether they’re on the road, off-site at a client location, or working from home.

Empowering your sales team through a streamlined marketing content distribution system can help increase sales, improve your ROI, and close any disconnects via self-service portals. If you’re in need of a new vendor, or want to discuss how Strata can help your business establish a MarTech ecosystem that benefits your team, contact us today.  


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