“As a technology-focused, modern brand, Digideck has been a great platform for our sales presentations at Prevent Biometrics. We like that our reps can build custom, “on-brand” presentations and distribute them easily with the simple sharing of a link. The Digideck has a number of useful features that have been embraced by our team and Sportsdigita has delivered friendly, responsive support whenever we’ve had an issue. I’m a big fan!”
—David Sigel, Chief Marketing Officer, Prevent Biometricsy
Pain points between sales and marketing have been well documented for generations. Even now, while technology and tools continue to advance, the same issues seem to persist. In recent years, solutions in the form of digital content management for sales and marketing have attempted to bridge the divide.
2021 MARKETING TRENDS
You’ve heard of sales enablement and account based marketing. And chances are, you’re already implementing tools and processes that reflect these terms. If not, they are worth implementing not only to save yourself bandwidth, but also because they do, in fact, pay off.
According to Salesforce’s most recent State of Sales, “75% of business buyers say connected processes–across marketing, sales and service interactions–are very important to winning their business.” Additionally, “marketing partnerships signal high-performing sales.
TREND WATCH: SUCCESSFULLY USING SALES ENABLEMENT
IN YOUR MARKETING DEPARTMENT
Sales enablement empowers your sellers with the resources, content, tools, and information they need to maximize their efforts so that they can spend time doing what they do best: Selling.
The foundation of any sales enablement program will always involve equipping the sales team with tools and collateral they can use (and reuse) throughout the sales cycle, and across various core audiences. This information might be customer-facing documents or sales sheets and checklists–to name a few. Regardless of what the items are, they all have one very important objective in common: they are designed to provide a standard, repeatable, reusable template so that across your sales team, output is consistent, on-brand and reflects the goals of the company–whether you have a sales team of 10, 100 or 1,000 salespeople.
“For sales enablement to be successful, it requires both marketing and sales to participate in its creation, ownership, and implementation.”
—Cargill
Initially, sales and marketing should work together to establish what is needed. Then, it’s up to marketing to create and compile the materials, which should include approved content, sales training, conversation guides, and externally-facing collateral pieces. Marketing should then be responsible for training the sales team on this collateral, while the responsibility of implementation and operation falls on the sales leader.
One way to make sure the sales team has everything they need is by leveraging an easy to use “Master sales deck”, a feature used as the single source of truth with platforms like Digideck.
Digideck is a cloud-based solution that allows you to create a template that includes all of the information your sales team will need and any parameters you would like to add. From there, each sales rep will have what they need to make their own presentations without having to request your marketing team for new collateral or revised content, every. Single. Time.
TREND WATCH: MARKETING AND SALES TEAMS
ARE ADOPTING ACCOUNT BASED MARKETING
“ Digideck is more in-line with today’s business needs. We like the fact that everything is easy to access. It allows each of our reps to deliver customized, professional presentations from any location. The presentations are easy to put together for each school and they remain consistent with the Jostens brand.”
—Claudia Fierro-Poppen, Director of Marketing, Jostens
DO MORE CUSTOMIZATION WITHOUT ADDING EXTRA MARKETING WORKLOAD
Not surprisingly, there are growing pains when making the switch to such a personalized and customized approach. Even with account based marketing hailed as the future and a crucial process for sales teams today, ITSMA found that as of 2018, a majority of those surveyed are just getting started.
Timing is of the essence, however, as account based marketing ages like a fine wine. More than 80% of those surveyed who had been using account based marketing for three or more years said the ROI was “significantly higher compared to conventional marketing.”
The extra effort of implementing account based marketing is worth it. The State of Sales report stated that it is one of the greatest disparities between top sales teams and underperforming peers. Eighty percent of high-performing teams are using account based marketing, while only 47% of underperforming teams are.
Are you considering investing more time and money into personalizing your prospect and client materials? Check out this article about how to scale and get started.
TREND WATCH: VIDEO AND VISUAL CONTENT IS EVERYWHERE–AND IT WORKS!
In today’s digital world the power of video marketing is a given and a no-brainer. Visual content, especially video, has a huge impact on the effectiveness of sales:
- 87% of businesses use video as a marketing tool – up from 63% in 2017
- 91% of video marketers consider video an important part of their marketing strategy
- 68% of people say they’d prefer to learn about a new product or service by watching a short video
- 87% of people would like to see more video from brands in 2019
OVERWHELMED WITH VIDEO AND VISUAL CONTENT DEMANDS?
Implementing video and visual content adds extra stress and workload for marketing and creative teams and, despite their efforts, they are often still not competitive. 90% of video marketers feel the level of competition and noise has increased in the past year.
You’re not alone if you are struggling to work video into your marketing strategy. Of the marketers not currently using video:
The key is to focus on one larger video at a time. Having a strategy of how it will work for you prior to shooting will allow you to edit and splice it into multiple smaller videos that will extend the life and value of the video, saving you time in the long run.
And how frustrating is it for you when the video assets your team spent so much time (and money) on are either underutilized because of technology constraints, or don’t get leveraged the right way? We hear you.
If you’re doing a consultation or a demo with a prospect, the last thing you want is to have your presentation look outdated and feel clunky. The truth is, having multiple windows open on a laptop during a meeting and asking for a wifi connection to play a video–or worse, sending multiple links in a follow up email without being able to see what they’re looking at–is so 2009. When your marketing and creative teams spend so much time, effort and money into creating a powerful asset, it should be leveraged seamlessly and effectively across your sales team and be able to prove that it’s being leveraged with metrics. Wouldn’t it be nice to have the ability to embed your videos into a visually engaging sales presentation and allow the sales person to have it live on their device without the need for internet? Having a platform like Digideck that showcases your creative while providing ROI is an invaluable tool in your organization–especially if your company is investing in video and other multimedia for marketing and sales purposes.
“Sportsdigita’s Digideck has significantly upgraded our premium presentation capabilities. Gone are the days of dated creative and inconsistent messaging. Digideck has provided our sales and service staff with a turnkey, intuitive, engaging and customizable tool to use for sales proposals, renewal conversations and annual recaps with current and prospective premium partners.
Additionally, the backend analytics have given our team insight into how quickly and often our prospects are viewing our presentations. From initial concept to product launch, the Sportsdigita team has provided best-in-class customer service and support. We look forward to continuing our partnership with Sportsdigita for years to come!”
—Rob Sullivan, SVP of Premium Sales & Service, Madison Square Garden
YOUR SOLUTION FOR MEETING SALES DEMANDS
WITH LIMITED MARKETING CAPACITY
So, how do you solve this problem? As a busy marketing leader, your plate is full; your marketing team is at capacity (or getting pretty close to it), and your sales team is looking to you to support their needs–and as an invested leader in your organization, pushing back on sales is simply not an option. Hiring more marketing team members may be an option; but it’s not a long-term scalable solution, and it may not be the best way to spend your budget. That leaves finding new tools and implementing new techniques as your best option. But how do you select the right tool for your company out of a sea of platforms? We have created a handy worksheet to help you find the right solution for your marketing team. YOUR SOLUTION FOR MEETING SALES DEMANDS
WITH LIMITED MARKETING CAPACITY
“Digideck makes our presentations innovative and 100% real time. There is no longer a question of which stat is current; with a couple of clicks in Digideck we can update all of our presentations at once. This is imperative given how quickly the numbers change in our business. Digideck allows us to customize presentations and easily tailor only the relevant information for each meeting. Our team has transitioned into telling stories rather than reciting facts. Our investors also love Digideck because it has given them a platform to tout their success as a partner with the Dallas Regional Chamber. As the most impactful business organization in North Texas, this technology allows the Dallas Regional Chamber to always be a step ahead.”
—Meghan Kelley Wehner, VP Membership & Revenue Growth, Dallas Regional Chamber
Is your presentation missing the wow factor? Let our Multimedia provide your prospects with an experience, not just a presentation. We make educating your clients engaging using videos, images, infographics and more.
You already have marketing and sales technology, how are you going to convince your boss that you need more? Easy. The Digideck seamlessly integrates with Salesforce, Pardot, Marketo, Hubspot, Gong, Canva and more making sales engagement easy. Then, use the information from you other technologies to create customized presentations for potential clients.
You have worked so hard to transition to account based marketing, but is it even worth it? Curious how your presentations have been received? Wondering which area of the presentation a potential client found most exciting? Anxious to see which sales rep is making the most pitches? Leave it to us. With our Real-Time Analytics you can not only see what is resonating with prospective clients, but we will also automatically let your sales team know when someone is looking at a presentation. No more guesswork required.
With the ease of a tool like The Digideck, can you afford not to scale account based marketing? Just think of the brand governance you would have, and your ability to manage content but without having to be involved in every presentation for every sales rep.
We’ve heard your frustrations and we have a solution: The Digideck.
Let us give you some capacity back.
FIND THE RIGHT TOOL
Once you have your prep work done and know the solution you’re looking for you can start your search. Here is a checklist of the must-haves:
- Analytics – Metrics, and reporting are an essential way to determine your success. You need to have the right analytics as proof of your results to tie back to ROI and show your impact.
- Visual impact – The tool should not only function well but be visually engaging to have more traction with prospects. You want something that showcases your creative and engages with your audience.
- Flexibility – No one is as tied to our desks as we once were. Consider the mobility of your sales people. Ensure that the tool is cloud-based and flexible to use on tablets, smart phones.
- Onboarding and adoption support – It’s not a helpful tool if your marketing or sales teams resists using it. Ensure that the platform you’re investing in has support in place for any bumps in the road after you purchase it.
- Customization – Your solution should allow for your campaign assets to be easily modified and repurposed for a personalized experience that will gain more traction with your prospects.
- CRM and Marketing Automation Integration – There is no reason to reinvent the wheel, find a solution that integrates with the software you are already using.
Let us help you solve your marketing capacity struggles.
