One of the life experiences I credit most for teaching me about marketing was the five years I spent in sales. I came to that job in a roundabout way 鈥� a division of Wells Fargo Bank wanted a paperless office and asked me to make that happen. I knew nothing about technology (and ultimately failed to create paperless-ness) but I quickly fell in love with computers.

My boss at that company helped too, giving me some of the best career advice I鈥檝e ever received. He told me 鈥淵ou鈥檝e got to love the core business you鈥檙e in or you鈥檒l never get ahead.鈥� I hated the core business I was in (banking), so I cut bait and started trying to find a job as a salesperson in a technology company.

My first assignment was a sales 鈥渙verlay鈥� position that focused on winning more business from the current customer base. I loved it and grew revenue by 300%, but the reps weren鈥檛 happy that someone else was making money from their customers. Management didn鈥檛 want to irritate the reps, so they eliminated my position and offered me a job in marketing.

Fast forward ten years, and in another company I spent four years in charge of both sales and marketing teams.

So while I consider myself a marketer, those five years in sales helped me see that several aspects of the way we differentiate the two roles is illogical and costly.

Consider this:

1. Sales and marketing are both about persuasion. The sales person鈥檚 job is to persuade one buyer at a time, while the marketer鈥檚 job is to persuade markets full of buyers.

When I was in sales, it was marketing鈥檚 job to get a buyer to notice us, and then it was my job to persuade that buyer to choose us. This was a great division of labor, because it鈥檚 way more difficult to persuade a market full of buyers than one at a time. But today鈥檚 buyers have changed the rules, navigating 60% to 80% of their decision before they talk to a salesperson. Companies that haven鈥檛 made the shift to persuasive marketing risk elimination before the salespeople have a chance to do their job.

2. Salespeople have the opportunity, permission and training to listen to buyers before they build a strategy to persuade them. Marketers have none of these things.

As a sales rep, I learned to dedicate the first part of every sales call to listening to my buyer, gaining real insight into that account鈥檚 needs and expectations. Then it was my job to describe our solution in a way that established a perfect fit between that buyer鈥檚 needs and our product. Go tell sales management that you want their reps to stop listening to buyers before they sell to them, and they鈥檒l look at you like you鈥檙e crazy. But everyone expects marketers to do just that.

3. Sales people have to optimize their time to persuade buyers to buy now, but marketers have to optimize their investments to build pipeline for the future.

By the time I started running sales, I completely understood the importance of marketing. 聽However, it wasn鈥檛 long before all of my time and attention shifted to the salespeople. Faced with the urgency of meeting this month鈥檚 numbers, our longer-term investments suffered. I learned that it鈥檚 really difficult to balance short and long term priorities, and that marketing metrics need to focus on results that impact the next quarter or next year, even if this seems less tangible.

4.听 While there are dozens of things that every good sales person learns about each buyer, the ability to be persuasive hinges on just 5 key insights.

When I decided to help marketers understand their buyer personas, I knew that many of the things I learned about buyers in sales only worked when I had the opportunity to build a strategy to persuade one buyer at a time. It was easy to see that tracking all of these distinctions about buyers would cause a lot of confusion and far too many different strategies. So I started thinking about what really helped me to be a persuasive sales rep, and that鈥檚 how the 5 Rings of Buying Insight became the foundation of buyer personas.

5.听 Despite everything you鈥檝e heard about price, the company that wins the buyer’s trust wins their business.

The solutions I had to sell were invariably more expensive than our competition. So we didn’t win on price. We competed for the buyer鈥檚 business by being the best listeners and using our insights to persuade buyers that we were best qualified to meet their expectations. Now that buyers can avoid sales contact for so long, a lot of that responsibility belongs to the marketing team.

I think it鈥檚 fair to say that when I was in sales, we had a lot more impact on the outcome of a deal than the reps I know today. And because this change is driven by buyers who have ready access to the information they think they need, this trend is unlikely to reverse itself. It’s time for marketers to gain the deep buyer insights that have always been the foundation of successful sales.

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#10.聽 I鈥檓 under a lot of pressure to address high-priority initiatives and don鈥檛 want to hear about other problems that you think I should take on. I just don’t have the bandwidth.

#9. 聽 Your website has all the same useless information as your competitor’s does. So no, I didn鈥檛 spend much time there.

#8.聽聽 I鈥檝e done my research and know about many of the things that I must have to succeed. I want to know whether you can deliver on those before I go any further.

#7.聽聽 Yes, I have a budget and the authority to buy, but I鈥檓 not going to tell you that. I鈥檒l decide when I鈥檓 ready to talk to a sales person.

#6.聽聽 I鈥檓 seeing a lot of obvious stuff about value, but nothing that speaks to the way we plan to measure the success of this initiative.

#5.听聽 I can鈥檛 make this decision without persuading other stakeholders. I need to see something that helps me handle their concerns and priorities too.

#4.听聽 I will lose my job if I choose the wrong solution. I need to be convinced that you can address my specific concerns about this decision.

#3.聽聽 I鈥檓 testing your company to see if you fully understand my needs in this area and will be responsive if I do buy from you.

#2.聽聽 We won鈥檛 choose the least expensive solution; we鈥檒l select the one that is the best match for our needs.

And the #1 thing I want you to know: 聽 This decision is actually not about price or features. We鈥檒l go with the company that we believe we can trust.

Have you heard these before? It’s easy to see why companies that best address these buyer concerns have a major competitive advantage in this buyer-driven market.

Marketers are learning that they can listen to their buyers, and we mean REALLY listen, to gain the insights that drive the content those buyers want and need. They’re discovering that this level of listening can’t be done through a survey or social media, that marketers need to have a unique kind of conversation with recent buyers, probing beyond the obvious answers until they know precisely how, when and why buyers choose the solutions they market.

These marketers are building buyer personas that focus on the Five Rings of Insight about the buying decision, avoiding the simple demographic profiles that can result in too many personas or not enough useful information about them.

Do your buyer personas reveal the insights you need to address these top 10 concerns? I love to hear from marketers who have truly insightful buyer personas.

If your buyer personas are missing some of this critical information, take a minute to check out the 色花堂 Masterclass, the prerecorded training that shows you how you can become your company鈥檚 buyer expert. Or contact us to learn how you can schedule a private workshop for your team of four or more marketers.

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