Sales and marketing play different roles in the customer journey. But they truly shine when both can work together. To do this, many companies implement a “nurturing while selling” strategy, which allows sales reps to manage some marketing campaigns while working on opportunities. But how might this work in your organization? Let’s explore nurturing while selling further.

Nurturing While Selling: The Basics

To understand nurturing while selling, you must first grasp the concept of the customer journey: the process of a customer moving from initial interest to eventual purchase. While most companies focus on marketing at the beginning and sales at the end, the middle portion often remains neglected. This is where nurturing while selling comes into play.

Nurturing while selling involves supporting your sales reps with marketing automation and other tools while they engage in the selling process. This approach can include sending targeted emails and offering resources to help your sales reps close deals.

The Role of Marketing Automation in Nurturing While Selling

One of the most common challenges in sales is keeping leads warm. Fortunately, marketing automation provides a much-needed solution. Sales reps can take advantage of automated marketing communications to stay in touch with potential customers and gently nudge them toward a purchase. Your team will be able to automate targeted email campaigns, provide tailored communications, track customer interactions, and provide valuable insights into consumer behavior. Best of all, this automated approach to nurturing while selling allows sales reps to focus on their core tasks without worrying about accidentally ghosting leads.

Navigating the Sales Process

In the early stages of sales, qualification is crucial. Sales reps rely on customer needs and behavior data to narrow down a potential client base for their products or services. Marketing automation can help here too. Page tagging can track customer behavior and provide insights into product interest. Meanwhile, automated email campaigns keep customers engaged with relevant information and promotions.

As leads enter the evaluation stage of the customer journey, opportunity management becomes the focus. At this stage, customers compare products and services and decide what to purchase. Providing content that helps customers make informed choices without overwhelming them with broad, early-stage content is essential. Social proof and testimonials are particularly effective here.

Implementing Control for Sales Reps

Sales reps who typically handle larger, more complex deals might object to marketing’s involvement in their sales process. You can mitigate this problem by giving your sales reps control over when and how marketing automation comes into the picture. Not only does this provide them with valuable tools, but it also ensures they feel empowered in their role.

You may choose to give control to your sales reps through:

• On/off control: This basic option allows sales reps to stop or start nurturing campaigns.
• Pause capability: This option adds a pause function to the on/off control, allowing reps to pause nurturing when actively engaging with leads and resume it when needed.
• Campaign selection: This allows sales reps to choose from a list of nurturing campaigns based on their needs. This approach is powerful but requires more involvement and expertise from the reps.

You may also want to consider automatic nurturing. This campaign kicks in if a set period of time passes with no sales activity, ensuring leads don’t go cold from lack of communication. Whatever your final choice, the key is to give your sales reps control over the process without overwhelming them with options.

Nurturing While Selling: Final Thoughts

Nurturing while selling can be a game-changer for organizations looking to improve their sales and marketing alignment. Keeping everyone on the same page ensures a smooth customer journey and potentially higher conversion rates. But taking the first step can be tricky. Changes can feel overwhelming when your sales and marketing teams have their preferred systems and approaches established. That’s where we can help. Contact to help your sales and marketing teams work together and focus on nurturing while selling.