The Ultimate Battle Royale: New Salespeople Versus More Marketing

We hear the question quite often from our clients: would my budget be better spent hiring another salesperson or used towards funding marketing efforts? Since we make our living here at HeavyDuty Branding by providing marketing services to industrial companies, you might expect our answer to quickly fall in the marketing camp. (And you would be correct.) But there is strong information which supports our pro-marketing vote, especially as it relates to the B2B manufacturing space where we live.

In most industries, sales and marketing departments enjoy a fruitful marriage. Each side supports and grows in union with the other. But for many manufacturers, they only have a manufacturing or production arm and a sales arm. In other words, they do not have formal marketing departments. So it makes complete sense that these companies default to adding more salespeople. After all, there’s nowhere else to get help.

Admittedly, when dealing with high-dollar, business-to-business purchases, most transactions typically come to fruition as a result of a well-nurtured, sales relationship. This reality hasn’t changed. But adding another body to headcount inevitably involves risk—not to mention the associated costs. A new salesperson’s salary alone can quickly erode a budget depending on the employee’s compensation structure. Additional resources may also be depleted with regard to the amount of onboarding, education and any other formal training necessary. Oh yeah, and then they must do their job of selling, too.

Many manufacturing sales teams are still only focused on selling to other businesses in the traditional sense. Their salespeople follow up on leads from emails or voicemails, and reach out to generate business via cold callings or by networking at trade organization events. He or she tells the brand’s story, qualifies the lead, and handles the objective required to prompt an action. But that’s only after an interested prospect has gotten to that stage.

Getting people to that stage is exactly what marketing—and marketing agencies—do.

By the time a consumer is picking up a phone or filling out an online contact form, they have done their homework. Salespeople don’t have the time or ability to educate prospects by themselves anymore. In fact, studies show that consumers make roughly 70% of their buying decisions long before they actually contact a company for the first time. The Internet is the place where everyone goes to do that homework. That’s why content marketing is so important.

With the right strategy, content marketing pushes the right information out to an interested party. Instead of waiting for a salesperson to provide an answer, great content marketing will let a prospect learn about a manufacture’s benefits on their own. Only when they want to actually interact with a live human being, will they seek to make contact. In other words, marketing sets up the sale and the salesperson closes the deal. There’s nothing groundbreaking here.

Salespeople will always want more and more leads but just don’t have the time to generate them. Their bosses will always want to show the return on investment that marketing yields. It was revealed that 60% of US B2B marketers said inbound marketing was more effective than outbound tactics. So the true value of marketing lies in the quality of the leads it produces and converts, not necessarily the quantity. When campaigns are executed digitally, there is data to support with whom these communications resonate. Also, it’s clear which messages are creating interest that generates action, and which hopefully, results in sales.

Without getting too “Big Brother,” content marketing will also help deliver more information about those who are seeking the information, too. We can know the kind of data people are seeking and we can also reach out to them in order to provide it better. The further they travel down the sales funnel from awareness through consideration to evaluation to preference, the more likely we can reach out and make contact with them. That’s when a great salesperson really shines.

For those manufacturing companies who do have marketing teams, only 30% say they are effective at content marketing when compared with their B2B manufacturing industry peers. (Of whom, 42 percent say they are effective.) No doubt, these results stem from the fact that these individuals must be over-stretched, serving as the digital marketers, creative artists, analysts, media buyers and public relations experts. Not to mention, they must focus on digital elements including content marketing, blogger outreach and SEO optimization. Simply put, manufacturing marketers—and certainly salespeople—don’t have the time or resources to implement a strategy and execute it.

So they should just hire a marketing agency. Like us.