Sales marketing is the alignment between your sales and marketing efforts, which ultimately drives your revenue. 

Before entering into the complexities, you might ask, sales and marketing are two different aspects. But what’s the need for an alignment in the first place? 

According to 22.1% of sales personnel, higher alignment between marketing and sales efforts helped them close more deals. 

 Not only that, 87% of sales and marketing leaders have stated that better sales and marketing collaboration has become significant for business growth.  

The conclusion from such findings?

Sales marketing is becoming more relevant. And this relevance holds true regardless of whether you are a seasoned marketer or someone new in the field. The trend is pointing towards higher adoption of sales marketing by companies. 

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How Has Sales Marketing Evolved

Traditionally, sales marketing has been more about impersonal selling and mass marketing. However, currently, its strategies are a blend of multiple factors: data, sales automation, sales tools, and most importantly, personalized experiences. Personalized marketing is increasingly becoming the focus of brands. 

Additionally, its impact has increased as companies have seen a 32% increase in revenue and a 20% increase in win rates. Win rates are the percentage of opportunities converted into closed deals by companies. This means business teams are becoming more effective. 

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Have You Embraced Digital Transformation?

If the answer is no, you should as early as possible. Integration of digital tools into traditional sales and marketing aspects is the new trend. Why? 

Firstly, most buyers begin their purchase journey online. So, the necessity of a robust digital strategy is a no-brainer. 

Moreover, sales automation helps reach targeted audiences in much less time. The whole sales funnel becomes consistent because human intervention is minimal. Which means conversion rates increase. 

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Sales Automation Drives Efficiency

What’s the point of adding sales tools to your current system? Let’s say you’re a part of a sales team and your job today is to send follow-ups on 500 potential leads. Could be via email or any other medium. The job is extremely tedious and let’s be honest, as soon as fatigue hits, the quality of the follow-ups will start dropping. 

Not what your LM expects from you. 

But, what if a simple tool could send the emails for you? All you have to do is give it the content guidelines, and the list of leads. 

You have now automated your workflow and have time to invest in other critical tasks. In short, sales tools have taken redundant tasks out of your schedule. 

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Key Benefits of Sales Automation

1. Increased Efficiency

More automation means better follow-ups, lead scoring, and customer interactions. All of that with much less manual labor. 

2. Enhanced Accuracy

Minimal human intervention results in fewer errors.

3. Improved Lead Management 

Tracking and optimization across every customer interaction leads to better response times to inquiries, which impacts conversion rates. 

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Sales Tools Help with Better Insights and Execution

Sales tools empower your sales marketing by providing better insights and streamlining sales strategies. Tools such as Hubspot, Salesforce, Zapier, Notion, ChatGPT, and so on. These tools also serve a range of purposes. Some help with CRM, some with productivity, and so on. 

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Key Benefits of Sales Tools

1. Data Analytics 

This feature allows teams to assess campaigns, identify trends, identify key performance metrics, and track them. 

2. Customer Relationship Management 

Sales tools offer sophisticated CRM solutions that enhance productivity by efficiently coordinating customer engagements and subsequent actions. 

3. Integration Capabilities 

When does your job become easier, if all your customer data is in one place or scrambled across multiple platforms? The answer’s straightforward. Sales tools can help you manage all these data in one place. 

The Impact of AI on Sales in Modern Marketing

You might have come across #ai for sales or other similar terms related to artificial intelligence on social media or newsletters. However, it’s more than just a buzzword. It’s transforming how businesses approach lead generation, engagement, and conversion. 

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What Can AI for Sales Do for You

1. Predictive Analytics

Firstly, it can forecast future trends for you based on historical data. Let’s say your company has press releases, blog posts, social media content, and many other content on different platforms. AI can scan this content and identify key trends and current audience interests. 

Agreed that this forecasting might not paint the 100% picture but it’s a start for you to make data-backed strategies.

2. Personalized Outreach 

AI for sales tools like Nabiq, Crayon, or Drift is focused on how to scale personalization. Yes, artificial intelligence can deliver messages or better yet, personalized messages to a big chunk of the audience at once. However, these tools want to make the conversations more humanlike, which can build better trust and customer engagement. 

3. Chatbots and Virtual Assistants Never Run out of Battery

With humans, you need to go through hiring and training phases and still, they won’t be able to provide 24/7 services to clients or leads because of their limitations. Most companies believe that the solution is to hire more help but that just compounds costs without bringing in realistic results. 

What you need are chatbots or virtual assistants where time is never a factor when it comes to responding to clients or prospects. This is very helpful in industries like real estate where speed provides a crucial advantage. 

The impact of AI for sales has become so apparent that 50% of senior-level professionals have already incorporated AI in their day-to-day tasks. And by senior, I mean seasoned marketers.  

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Will Your Sales Marketing Strategy Succeed?

Why such a long discourse on sales automation or sales tools in the first place? Companies often think of these terms as isolated concepts, which isn’t a good practice. So, what are some good practices to form more impactful sales marketing strategies - 

‍1. You Don’t Need to Measure Every Metric

You might see ads where certain tools claim to measure hundreds of metrics for you. Don’t get swayed. Firstly, you need to identify which metrics are the most important for your company to measure success. Do you want to focus more on conversion rates, win rates, or client retention? The choice depends on you. 

Based on the choice you make, you need to set an action plan that consists of small goals, which can help achieve the target metric. With this systematic approach, tracking becomes easier as well.   

2. Start Investing in Sales Automation

Again, don’t get swayed by what these tools want to sell you. Think of what you need to buy. Which tool can help you automate your sales funnel, assess existing campaigns, identify the underperformers, track progress across multiple sales points, and so on? 

3. Experiment with AI

Did you know that Spotify uses predictive AI algorithms for mapping customer journeys? When you as a music lover interact with the app, the algorithm starts working in the background to figure out what you like and when. Spotify uses this data to shape its CX (customer experience). Clearly, this strategy is working because Spotify has reported 263 million premium users by the end of 2024.

Not just Spotify, Netflix, Amazon, Meta, and many big brands have been consistently using AI and machine learning to improve their sales marketing. 

If these brands need AI, so does yours. 

4. Iterate, Analyze, and Optimize

Your sales marketing strategy might be working today, but there might be a new trend tomorrow. Your job is to stay consistent with data acquisition and experimentation. AI for sales can keep you updated with recent developments in the industry and you have to leverage those updates to modify your existing strategies. 

For instance, there are thousands of pieces of content on social platforms about GEO vs SEO and how SEO is dead. Why are people publishing blog posts or LinkedIn posts consistently on this specific topic? Because that is the current trend now. Generative AI on Google is changing how people approach SEO, and content creators are taking complete advantage of it.

What Are My Final Thoughts

I believe the need for alignment between sales and marketing will increase as we move deeper into the digital age. That means what you invest today in sales marketing, will contribute to revenue growth in the future. 

Also, it is a given that you need to adapt sales automation or AI for sales more into your current workspace. However, you also need to educate yourself and your teams on the proper use of AI and its impact. Because tools can help you with data and lessen your manual efforts. But you are the one who needs to strategize based on that data.

A good approach to such education could be to go through case studies of different tools in the market. That could kill two birds with one stone. On one hand, you’re learning about the impact of AI on sales marketing, and on the other, you’re getting familiar with a sales tool.

But that’s just a suggestion. What matters is you start your automation and AI journey from this moment. Still not convinced? Give us 30 minutes and you will be.