Every company needs a sound marketing strategy to cultivate its brand and generate viable leads. In most cases, that means deploying a multi-channel approach that relies on social, digital, printed materials or even promotional goodies.

The challenge with multi-channel marketing, especially in today’s tight labor market, is that it can be time-consuming. Some companies are coping by moving marketing responsibilities to other staff members who are themselves already stretched. The result is less marketing activity, fewer leads, and a frustrated sales force.

De-Centralize Some Marketing Activities

There is another option: let the sales team take on some of the marketing duties. With martech software such as AccuConnect, this is easier and more productive than you might think, and it yields results.

First, let’s talk about why sales reps should assume some marketing duties. Like most other corporate functions, sales strategies are evolving. Many modern sales professionals are becoming directly involved in creating their own sales pipeline and content to attract, convert, and retain clients.

This makes infinite sense.

Most-Informed About the Customers

Sales professionals live in the trenches, so they likely understand their clients better than anyone else in the company. They know how to build and nurture relationships that foster trust. This makes them the ideal people to target key decision makers with custom content and information. Those decision makers are more likely to be open and engage with messages from someone with whom they are familiar. Clients are overburdened too and they’re not looking to deal with multiple contacts from one company.

Not only do sales professionals understand their clients, they also recognize what message, offer, incentive, or information each client will find valuable. More importantly, they can identify when their clients and prospects will perceive an irrelevant sales pitch as a waste of time. Who knows better where a client might be in the purchasing funnel and what message or informational brochure will engage them?

Sales professionals also know how to upsell. Often marketing initiatives are a scattershot exercise, especially if you’re short staffed. Even well executed campaigns return engagement rates in the single digits, which is not a good use of time or resources. It’s much more productive to target existing clients with personalized and relevant pitches.

From a corporate perspective, engaging the sales team with marketing programs makes infinite sense as it aligns the two departments in working toward the same goal while being mutually supportive.

In short, your sales team just might be your most effective marketing weapon you can deploy with great precision using the right automated marketing software.

Give Sales the Tools but Retain Control

Salespeople are not writers and designers, however. They will certainly need help with copy, messaging creation, and design elements. A sales engagement platform like AccuConnect automates the marketing function with stored content and pre-approved marketing materials, client lists, document templates, digital assets, branded merchandise, print buying capabilities, and other distribution tools.

Sales teams can easily find and deploy any marketing element they need to do their job. They can create client lists, nurture leads, and trigger marketing events across multiple platforms, from text messaging to direct mail. Additionally, they can precisely target clients based on location, demographics, lifestyle, or other relevant criteria.

If they need to send eye catching printed promotions, product samples, or other tangible goods, the program makes it easy to order all those items from a dedicated printer.

There are benefits for the marketing department as well. Staff can use its limited time to create the content, ensuring consistency for visual branding, campaign themes, and adapting messaging to various platforms, without worrying about deployment. In addition, marketing can track what assets are being used and what result they yield.

Having sales professionals take a hand in marketing achieves great synergies between marketing and sales, uses scarce resources most efficiently, puts more control in the hands of staff responsible for generating revenue. An enabling tool like AccuConnect generates useful data for everyone to use. It’s a win-win!