Business developers and marketers speak to the same people, but sellers engage in one-on-one communication while marketers push to a larger audience. They both approach the same people for a sales conversation, which ties their responsibilities and objectives together. They must communicate and work together in their outreach efforts because of this.
This thought was reinforced when I interviewed Caryn Kopp, Chief Door Opener® at Kopp Consulting. As an inbound marketer, I was thinking about how I could digitize the sales messaging to a broader audience and help the sellers’ efforts as she described her strategy for developing sales messaging that obtains executive meetings.
For the best results, business development and marketing should collaborate. Unfortunately, for various reasons, many businesses do not operate in this manner. Making it happen requires a coordinated effort and a planned strategy, which is not simple.
Here is a summary of how marketing and business development can work together to generate money and improve outcomes for the firm.
The Context
During the interview, Caryn spoke about her team’s best practices and how they handle business development. Every day, her company, Kopp Consulting, conducts business development for other companies and effectively initiates sales conversations that result in deals. They have a setup period during which they can develop their sales plan before starting their sales outreach. The planning method used by Caryn for business development is similar to the one needed for marketing, but from a different perspective:
Make lists of prospective customers who will “find you to be the apparent solution and be eager to pay as soon as they discover you exist,” in Caryn’s words. The exact list will be used in various ways by both sellers and marketers.
Create a pertinent one-on-one sales pitch that “makes the executive feel compelled to accept the meeting.” The same talking points will be distributed by marketing to the online audience in various platforms, methods, and styles. Additionally, they can delve deeper into the subjects.
replicating the buyer persona Peer-to-peer communication is the method Caryn’s team employs, so they “don’t have entry-level business developers calling on top executives and CEOs.” Marketing will establish a web presence that reflects the values and interests of the target prospects.
Though it requires serious thought, creating such a foundation is worthwhile since it produces quantifiable outcomes.
Aligning business development and marketing
The marketing message and the target market should complement and support the business development message and target market. The same message is being sent to the same people; it has just been formatted and made more widely known. The following are the steps for aligning company development and marketing:
Business developers engage in sales discussions using the entire audience and messaging. In their one-on-one talks, they refer to the digital version of the content when they are in marketing alignment to amplify their point. Prospects can evaluate the digital content whenever it is most convenient because it is accessible from any location and at any time.
Marketers use the whole audience and messaging to:
- Ascertain that the business has a strong web presence that draws target prospects to follow, even if they aren’t ready to buy.
- Engage the first pool of qualified target prospects online as they go farther along the buying cycle.
- Obtain new leads for sellers to begin discussions with by attracting new prospects who aren’t on the primary target prospect list.
- When a target prospect, especially one who has been professionally addressed by a business developer, is in need and sees your brand appear online, they will call the seller. It’s a double blow to your expansion initiatives.
A win-win situation occurs when business development and marketing are coordinated around the same target prospect list and talking topics. To increase the size of the sales funnel, marketers attract more new potential clients while sellers have a more vital message, greater credibility, and greater trust.