JUMPSTART STEP 5: SALES TEAM MARKET INSIGHTS

Tap Your Most Valuable Resource for Insights…Your Sales Team!

Sales and marketing obviously go hand in hand, so you don’t want to develop your marketing plan without involving the sales side of your organization. One of the best ways to do that is by digging into your sales team’s market insights. You can find out a lot about how your marketing efforts are (and aren’t) working by talking to the sales team. They’ll also provide valuable insight into your current and prospective clients as well as your competitors.

How do you go about organizing all of these opinions? We’ve found the most efficient method is via individual interviews with sales team members. It can be helpful to have an outsider perform these so everyone can speak freely and honestly. We have done countless interviews with our clients’ employees and sales teams, and we’d be happy to do the same for you! Just reach out to us via the form here.

Want to give it a shot yourself? Here are some examples of the types of questions we typically ask. You should spend some time ahead of the interviews thinking about what areas you really want to cover, and then customize this question list to match your needs. Some of the answers to these questions probably seem obvious to you – if you know the sales team is on the same page as you and your marketing team, you can skip those. But it may be helpful to get their perspective to be sure! And make sure to note who you’re speaking with and what their specific role in sales is when you’re documenting these interviews.

Click the image below to get your own copy of this question checklist!

Questions to Help You Get Started on Gathering Sales Team Market Insights

1. Background Info
   1. What is your elevator speech?
   2. Who are your top competitors?
   3. What do you feel is the current perception of your company in the marketplace?
2. Sales & Marketing Challenges
   1. What are your top sales and marketing challenges?
   2. How do you think these challenges need to be addressed?
3. Current Clients & Prospective Clients
   1. Who are your current clients?
   2. What are their typical pain points?
   3. How were most acquired?
   4. Who are you typically communicating with within an organization?
   5. Who are your ideal prospective clients?
4. Sales Process
   1. What is your typical sales process?
   2. What tools are you using to sell?
   3. Do you feel you have the sales tools you need?
   4. How do you nurture sales that are in the pipeline?
   5. What is your most difficult weakness or obstacle(s) to overcome in closing the sale?
5. Website Objectives & Requirements
   1. Do you feel the website effectively communicates your company’s brand and offerings?
   2. What actions do we want people to take when they go to your website?

Once you’ve completed interviews from enough team members (that could just be a representative group if you’re a large company, or it could be every salesperson if you’re smaller), pull out the highlights and comments that really stood out to you. It can be helpful to compile a master list of the questions with the notable takeaways from multiple contributors. You should come away with clear direction on where you need to make some changes to your marketing plan or where you may need to re-focus your energy.