When they work together seamlessly, sales and marketing can come together to create a singular sales process that has a positive impact on a company as a whole. In the final part of our Q&A with Steven Holstein, former CMO of Guardian, we’ll address the importance of linking marketing, mobile and sales together.
How do you view the role that mobile has played and will continue to play when we think about sales and marketing working together?
Holstein: “I think what mobile does is instigate – as other mediums have in the past – [and] enforces the relationship to be that much stronger, primarily because if you think about the salesperson out there on the street and they’ve got their mobile device, the question is, ‘Is what’s on the mobile device as good as what it could be from a content standpoint?’ The device itself, the apps that are out there – and Seismic is a good example of one – which are really robust and enable sales to be successful are there. Now the question is, ‘How is marketing forming a relationship with distribution to make sure that content in the right context is there to be able to form that really strong, intimate relationship with the audience that the salesperson is talking to?’ If that’s the case, then you really have a successful singular sales process.
The other thing you want to make sure of in the marketing organization is to [verify] that the content you’re showing on your mobile device aligns with the content that’s out there on all of your other mediums. The trend we talked about earlier is making sure that you have a single content management system where you can repurpose different parts of your content in different mediums – again, tools that a salesperson can use to complement and really move the mobile device into the forefront so it becomes an overall true part of the sales process that the sales person is executing.”
