Transcription:
Amanda Joyce:
Hi, I’m Amanda Joyce.
Devon Hayes:
And I’m Devon Hayes, and today we’re going to be talking about where marketing ends and sales begins, and here’s why you should care. Understanding the role that each department plays can improve efficiencies and your conversion rate, so with that, let’s dive in.
Amanda Joyce:
Okay. Well, before we talk, we really dive into the topic, I feel like we’d be remiss to not talk about RSS a little bit or the Roofing Success Summit.
Devon Hayes:
Yes. We were in Breckenridge. The Roofing Academy, they always put on a great summit, expo, conference, whatever you want to call it.
Amanda Joyce:
Yeah, exactly. Shout out to Randy Brothers and the whole team over there. They did an amazing job.
Devon Hayes:
Amazing job. It was in Breckenridge this year, and they had a lot of brilliant speakers and a lot of the best marketing minds in the industry, some really, really talented people up there. I was lucky enough to be on a panel with them and which was an honor because those guys are great. Leah at the Roofing Academy, she’s on the panel as well. There was a great conversation, and some of the next few podcasts are going to come from the questions that came from the audience at the Roofing Success Summit. One of them, it was a great question and it was… What was it? It was like, “When does the lead go from marketing to sales? What’s that relationship and kind of the confusion of when is it a marketing qualified lead versus a sales qualified lead? That kind of thing.
Amanda Joyce:
Yeah. Exactly. Then I feel like it turned into a much bigger conversation. I thought it was one of the more powerful things that was even discussed when you guys were up there on the panel. We both agree that it’s really great information for any contractor at any level of the growth of their business to understand.
Devon Hayes:
Yeah, because really I think what’s really common and that we hear a lot is that there is some tension between sales and marketing.
Amanda Joyce:
We’ve felt it before too.
Devon Hayes:
Yes, definitely have felt it. It was a great conversation, and while there’s a succinct answer to say, “Well, marketing gets the leads in the door and then sales needs to convert them,” that’s an easy answer. But that’s the succinct, most precise answer. But the real answer is that marketing touches literally every department in a business. It touches operations, it touches production, it definitely touches sales and all of the communication between each department, they all need to think of themselves as marketers. Because with sales, what are the pushbacks they’re getting from customers? Why aren’t they converting leads, if they’re not converting, or if they are converting, why are they converting them?
Amanda Joyce:
Yeah, exactly, or “This is a great lead. Where’d it come from? How did you guys get this? I want more of them.” That is gold for us as marketers, but when we’re sitting behind a computer and we’re counting leads coming in, we’re looking at conversion rates, we’re trying to maximize with impact marketing, but we don’t know whether X, Y lead was better and we need help so…
Devon Hayes:
Yeah, absolutely. Understanding where those leads come from, then we can drive more of them. Even I think the messaging can change in any kind of marketing activity. When you do have a raving fan, they’re like, oh my gosh, they love the fact that we have this automated kind of in production CRM that says these emails and these checkpoints, and “Thank you so much for communicating what’s going on. I never felt like I was in the dark.” Well, that’s something that then marketing can take that and use that information to create some great messaging around that., like, “This is what we do better. While you’re in the production process, you’ll get these touchpoints so you’re always aware of what’s happening with the job.”
Amanda Joyce:
Exactly. I head up the content here and that’s the kind of gold I’m constantly trying to pull out of our clients and trying to get them to tell me, understanding what’s differentiating you in the marketplace and then communicating that through your marketing messaging, everyone wins at that point. At the end of the day, ideally, if all these people are talking to each other and sharing this information, everyone internally wins. The client’s benefit as well. It should ideally make marketing more efficient, but everyone’s jobs easier. If your clients are happy, you’re communicating it properly, and it’s all copacetic.
Devon Hayes:
Yes, absolutely. With that, that constant communication between sales and marketing, I mean, I know that we struggle with that sometimes with our clients, not sometimes. A lot of times it’s really hard to get the information about, say, a project, a really cool project. We know sales guys are busy, but what we as marketers wished the sales team would understand is, “Do you love that project? It’s giant, it’s got a great bottom line. Do you want more of those? Okay, well tell us about that project.” That information, we can turn it into video, we can turn it into blog, we can turn that bit of content, turn it into a lot of different types of content in a lot of different formats to attract more of those buyers. Having that symbiotic relationship between sales and marketing is only going to help you drive more sales, drive more leads, qualified leads, and convert them. Going back to how marketing touches all departments, that also goes for whatever is happening in the operations department too, right?
Amanda Joyce:
Yeah, absolutely. I loved hearing that. That was one of the things that came up on the panel. We started talking sales and marketing and then suddenly operations came in there and everyone was getting really excited about it. A lot of people are like, “How am I not doing this? Why not having operations reach out to marketing? The commonly asked questions that we’re dealing with all the time, let’s get some strong content around it.” Sometimes somebody can answer their own question on the website, without ever having to reach out and bother someone… Not bother someone in operations, but take up that valuable time. They feel good too if they can hit the site, they’re speaking to my needs, they’re telling me what I need. I can move on with my day, and I don’t have to pick up the phone and call and ask a question that could’ve easily been answered through effective content.
Devon Hayes:
Yeah, absolutely. I think I heard this on the Contractor Evolution podcast. The guy from CompanyCam was on there and they were talking about branding, but this ties into the marketing collateral piece. They were like, “One of the most powerful pieces of collateral is just simply having the process as a handout to your customer.” That’s something that’s collateral, but the messaging on that, when a customer is sitting with you and you’re selling to them and they’re looking at maybe that piece of collateral and it’s talking about the process, the construction process, what are their questions on it? Tell marketing so they can refine that piece of collateral to make your job of selling a lot easier. But it is true. That’s like a super handy piece of marketing collateral. It’s just really powerful. Again-
Amanda Joyce:
On that same note too… Oh, sorry. I was going to say on that same note too, as someone who plans content all the time, it’s so nice to get that because it’s much more enjoyable (a) to write content that speaks to that. But it’s like the content works better. It’s more fun for me to look at the analytics later and be like, “Wow, that piece that we planned and wrote three months ago is one of our stronger pieces all of a sudden.” Versus trying to go out and just use search data and stuff to kind of guess what our clients are wanting to hear from us. Hearing that, the people that are in the field talking to ideal client in your market, that is the information that marketing needs to take and zhush and make pretty and make your life easier to close them, make operations’ life easier to service them.
If they can say, “Oh, I’ve got some information on this. Can I email it over to you right now?” They don’t even have to go through it. They’ve got it canned and ready. That’s ultimately our goal as marketers. We want to help, and I do think sometimes that unspoken tension happens because everyone’s siloed and they’re too busy and they’re too head down and they just want us to leave them alone. But I think that they were trying to be everyone’s friend. We want to help, well…
Devon Hayes:
Yeah. Yeah. That is with sales. But then going back to how marketing touches all departments, if you’re thinking about, “Let’s take a look at the social media marketing channel.” It is so much more effective if we have pictures of, I don’t know, a donut day at the office or bring your little furry friend to workday. People buy from people, and so when you can humanize your brand and share that, but if you have a third-party marketing company, or if you’re a sales guy and you go to a networking group and you bring donuts to everybody, how is your marketer going to know that unless you’re sharing that and sending pictures and sharing those updates to make the marketing more effective and to humanize the brand and to again, reinforce that people buy from people and trying to just get that messaging across?
Because as marketers, without that info, especially, we’re digital marketers, so we’re just used to putting our heads down. We’re like, “What do the Google gods want today?” Tying into that today, they want more stories. They are combating the ChatGPTs of the world and AI content by really favoring stories and not just informational things. The more stories we can tell, the better marketers we’re going to be, and the more we’re going to attract the customers that you already have by sharing that information with us. We had a great conversation with Joseph Hughes actually at the Roofing Success Summit, and he dropped that word symbiotic, and I was like, “Oh my God, I haven’t heard that since elementary school.”
You know when you have a big shark in the little fish that swims along and just eats all the stuff off of it? it’s true. It’s a mutually beneficial, symbiotic relationship. That’s exactly how marketing should be viewed, not just with sales, but with everybody in your company, every person in your company. If you can get them to buy into the idea that they’re marketing as well, I think you’re just going to have better content and better messaging and really have a better brand all around that really communicates who you are as a company and what your culture is, and that’s what customers buy.
Amanda Joyce:
Exactly. If everybody could just be wearing that hat, so just kind of have that mindset so that if somebody calls in and has a question that they’re like, “Oh, this is a great one. I got to make sure marketing is aware of this.” Or somebody gives a glowing review and maybe they’re only giving it to you over the phone and you’re like, “Oh my gosh, we got to make sure you’re giving us a Google review and I have to get you in contact with our marketing department because we’d love to do a spotlight on you.” Just that quick, just having that in the back of your mind so your brain goes there as somebody in operations, can make all the difference in the world for the marketing team.
There are boots on the ground so if you’re training your team to think that way, even if it just means once a month during an all hands on board meeting, you have a quick 15-minute marketing session, talk about what we’re doing, what we need. If that can start getting people thinking that direction, I just feel like company owners are going to be super stoked about what they’re able to zhush or encourage there internally with their teams, and everyone’s going to win.
Devon Hayes:
Absolutely. Yeah. Our takeaway is this, where does marketing stop and sales begin? It doesn’t. Everyone in your company should think of themselves as a marketer and that is the answer. Symbiotic relationships, right?
Amanda Joyce:
Shout out to Joe.
Devon Hayes:
Yeah, shout out to Joe. I don’t know who the shark is, I don’t know who the little minnow is, but we all got to help each other. That’s what makes for the most effective marketing and makes for attracting more buyers with better messaging because we’re communicating, we know how to solve those problems. I think that sums it up. I think we did it.
Amanda Joyce:
I think we did it. Yeah. Absolutely. We so appreciate you guys listening. We hope you found this impactful, and as always, let us know if you have any ideas or things you want us to cover or let us know if you put this into practice and it’s working for you. We’d love to hear from you.
Devon Hayes:
Absolutely. Thank you.
