How to Meet Marketing and Sales Enablement Goals this Year

A new year has begun and that means goals and resolutions are ever present in our minds.

What do you want from your business this year; and realistically, how are you going to make it happen? Where do you want your business to be at the end of the year?

In order to reach any destination, you have to plan your route. In order to meet your sales and marketing goals, you must create a plan to make it happen. Defined sales and marketing goals will play a big part in the success of your business. 

In order to define your sales and marketing goals, you must outline the specific needs of your business.

Revenue

Do you have an anticipated revenue target for your business?

I’d imagine you do, as most businesses need to plan at least this much, so they can pay the bills. But unless you engage in some cost-cutting measures, you will need to rely on sales and marketing to meet your target revenue.

So, now I am going to ask you to do something that some businesses find really challenging to do — determine how you will realistically meet your revenue goals?

Let’s examine some key areas that should be addressed in your planning efforts.

• Lead Generation
• Marketing
  • Marketing Technology
  • Website
  • Content Marketing
  • Email Marketing
  • Social Media
• Sales Enablement
  • Sales Process & Scripts
  • Sales Content and Collateral

Lead Generation

What is your plan for attracting new prospects? Do you have a written strategy with SMART goals?

• How many leads do you need to bring in to close the number of sales you want? Have you broken this down by manageable segments — quarter, month?
• What channel(s) are you using to reach these leads:
  • Paid advertising
  • Organic search
  • Email
  • Social Media
  • Referrals
  • Partners
  • Sales prospecting efforts — Cold/Warm contacts
  • Networking events / conferences (online events)
• Do you have a plan on how to qualify leads? Use lead scoring?
• Do you have the tools and resources to consistently track and measure success? Are your lead generation efforts paying off or do you need to pivot?

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Marketing

From inbound marketing efforts to advertising, do you have a strategy to cut through the noise and to get your prospects to pay attention to you?

• Have you positioned your marketing efforts to demonstrate you are truly there to help your prospects, and not just sell them?
• What are you doing to demonstrate you are a trusted authority on your product/service?
• Have you established a company-wide positioning statement for your business? Have you made this statement extremely visible to all your prospects on your website’s homepage?
• Are you employing consistent branding throughout all your marketing and sales efforts?

Marketing Technology

• Do you have a marketing automation system in place that is set up and configured properly?
• If you have a small team, are you taking advantage of marketing tools to maximize your limited marketing resources?
• Is your CMS integrated with your marketing automation system?
• Do you have marketing analytics properly in place with a campaign tracking setup?

Website

• Are you making judicious use of forms to capture new leads or subscribers?
• Do you have clear and easy-to-understand site navigation? Can prospects easily find the information they are seeking from the home page?
• Can you add more helpful, targeted pages for a specific audience?
• Are you using dedicated landing pages for content offers?
• Are you committing to SEO efforts to raise your site’s organic search ranking?

Content Marketing

• Do you have a content strategy that ties in and complements all your paid advertising and organic marketing efforts?
• Do you have a content calendar in place that is shared across key groups?
• Is your content providing value to your audience?
• Do you have a plan to recycle and reuse your content?
• What kind of content offers (aka lead magnets) do you plan on providing?

Email Marketing

• Are you emailing your audience on a consistent basis with consistent branding?
• Are your contact lists segmented, and are you sending different messages to different segments to improve response?
• Do you have a plan for growing your subscribers?
• What is your plan for increasing open rate or click-through rate?

Social Media

• How are you going to grow company followers? What number do you want to reach monthly or over a couple of months?
• Are you investing in video for your social media?
• Can and should you pay for boosting posts?
• Are you planning on expanding your brand’s reach by using social media?

Sales Enablement

As you review your outbound sales strategy ask yourself if your marketing team is a part of your sales process. Are your sales and marketing teams communicating well?

Sales Process and Scripts

• Do you have a CRM system in place to consistently guide your team’s sales process?
• Do you have a detailed sales process?
• Do you have defined sales positioning statements?
• Have you broken down your outbound sales contacts into stages?
• Do you have defined sales email templates, call, and voicemail scripts for each contact stage?

Sales Content and Collateral

• Do you have the right sales collateral?
• Are your sales presentations professional and consistent with your branding and positioning?
• Do you have testimonials in place, in a variety of formats, that can be easily shared?
• Do you have case studies?
• Are your product/service guides easy to read, accessible, and up to date? Do you have tracking employed, so you know when your sales content is reviewed?

If you have partners, do you have a consistent communication plan in place , such as a partner newsletter, to provide value-added content to help your sales partners be successful?

Improve Your Marketing and Sales Enablement Efforts This Year

We are just scratching the surface with what should be considered when wanting to increase your revenue and leads. Marketing and Sales Enablement are huge, deep fields, and there are so many variables that can help lead to success.

Failing to plan is planning to fail.

Make this the year your business really takes it to the next level. If you invest the time and the effort, you will create a strategy for your business to grow. It’s a lot of work initially, but at the end of the year, you will be pleased with the results.

Our team at CycleWerx is happy to help however we can — from strategy to execution. We want to be your marketing and sales enablement partners. Contact us today to put your brand in motion.