Companies that successfully align marketing and sales generate 32% higher revenue and retain 36% more customers. 

When this happens marketing teams better understand how to position their products and generate leads the sales team can close. 

How do you get there? Use this simple tactic:

Listen to sales calls

Have your marketing team listen in on sales calls — either in-person or better yet, via call recordings. 

Listening to sales interact with customers can unearth insights that can help marketers create better messaging and content across the board. 

Why bother? Look at the stats: 

•      83% of marketers say content marketing success depends on content quality
•      63% of marketers say creating content is a challenge for their company
•      69% of marketers say they’re struggling with content marketing

Here’s how listening in on sales calls can help:

 

1. Bring In Higher Quality Leads

 

Listening to sales calls helps marketers create a more detailed customer journey map. By hearing what customers like as well as their pain points at different parts of the journey, marketers can develop more relevant content that moves them down the funnel. 

Higher-value content and improved messaging bring higher quality leads and increased conversion rates. 

 

2. Inspire Content Ideas

 

Sales calls can reveal insights that inspire better content. In fact, Marketers can get a lot out of a single call.

For example, a call where a prospect doesn’t understand the value of your product can better help your marketing team create: 

•     FAQ pages 
•     Blog post alining customer pain points with your solution
•     Infographics showing your product’s ROI 
•     Calculator tools that leads can use to determine their savings
•     Case studies and customer testimonials showcasing your product’s value
•     Explainer videos that demonstrate how easy the service is to use
•     Detailed product descriptions using your customer’s language 

Listening to sales calls helps you get inside your customers’ heads so you can create content that will resonate. 

 

3. Reveal Competitor Information

 

Competitor analysis is a vital part of the marketing machine, but you can get solid insights for free by listening to sales calls.

On a sales call, customers may reference why they’re considering your competitors. They may reveal what a competitor presented to them and how that compares to your offering. 

This type of information might not register as something your sales team should pass on to marketing. When content marketers hear it directly, they can use those insights to outshine the competition.

Content marketers can use competitor insights from sales calls to:

•     Identify successful competitor content and devise a way to make it 10x better.
•     Address misconceptions about your company.
•     Better position your product against competitor offers. 

 

4. Help Improve Sales Strategy

 

It goes the other way too. Marketers can identify actual pain points and sales objections through an in-person or recorded phone call. Then they can create collateral that helps the sales reps ease client concerns and overcome challenges. 

As new content is created, marketers can share it with sales team members. Sales can then refer their leads to that content to move them along the pipeline.  

 

5. Gain Insight For Buyer Persona Creation

 

Your sales team is on the front lines of customer communication. And one of their primary jobs is to learn about potential customers and understand their needs. 

As sales reps interview prospects on calls and extract this information, it gives your marketing team a tremendous opportunity. It gives them a chance to hear how your target market describes itself — insights can help marketers identify and build the ideal customer profile.

 

6. Improve SEO For Better Traffic

 

Sales calls reveal lesser-known pain points and concerns that your marketing team may have not considered. This can help content strategists focus their SEO efforts by finding less competitive, specific to your niche keywords — specifically longtail keywords (3 words or more). 

In fact, longtail searches account for 70% of all searches. 

Sales calls can help your writers generate content that’s better tailored to what your potential customers are actually looking for when they type queries into search engines (i.e., Google stuff).

 

Create A Growth Machine

 

To wrap it up, envision this cycle: 

Your sales team provides direct customer insights to your content marketers via sales calls > marketers create better content with those insights > you experience increase website traffic and get more qualified leads via improved content > better content strategy improves your sales pipeline efforts > sales close more customers because leads are better qualified > repeat, repeat, revenue.

 

 

Editor’s Note: This article is part of the blog series Run Your Business brought to you by the marketing team at UniTel Voice, the virtual phone system priced and designed for startups and small business owners.