The Sales Section outlines the activities, sales collateral and key messages that our sales team uses in the customer journey. Influenced by the Persona Section and supported by the Marketing Section, the activities and tactics outlined may change as new sales goals are rolled out, and will change when a new program is implemented.
Important Note: Before reading any further, you must download the free customer journey template. When the template loads, you’ll be prompted to subscribe for free to IterativeMarketing.net, where you will gain complete access to our premium content. The rest of this post will be very hard to follow without it.
Important Note #2: This is the fourth blog in a five-part series. Check out the remaining blogs for details on completing other sections of the customer journey: Mapping the Customer Journey; Mapping the Customer Journey: Persona’s Perspective; Mapping the Customer Journey: Marketing’s Perspective; Expanding The Customer Journey (reference this blog to break the consideration states into more actionable segments).
Step 11: Sales Action (Row 12)
These are the actions the sales team engages in at this specific states in the persona’s journey. Documenting these will allow marketing to get a better understanding of the steps that the sales department takes as they interact with a prospect, and can be helpful in aligning sales/marketing activities and ensuring a consistent brand experience and message.
If your organization does not engage in outbound sales (cold calling/emailing, door-to-door sales), you will likely not have any activities during the “See” state of your journey, since at this point the persona has no reason to be interacting directly with the brand.
Questions to uncover sales actions at this state:
- How does the sales team interact with the prospect at this state?
Step 12: Sales Collateral (Row 13)
This section outlines the collateral that the sales team is using to support their sales strategy. Examples of this collateral may include information sheets, product comparisons, PowerPoints/presentations, customer testimonials and reviews, or tools.
Questions to uncover appropriate collateral at this state:
- What type of information are prospects requesting at this state?
- How do prospects in this state like to receive information?
- What is one piece of collateral that the sales team wishes they had at this state?
Step 13: Sales Key Message (Row 14)
Like the Key Marketing Message above, the Sales Marketing Message aligns what the sales team is communicating with what the persona needs to hear, as identified in the persona section. This allows the sales team to provide consistent messaging as they interact with the prospect – messaging that is aligned with marketing’s content and message.
Questions to uncover they key marketing message at this state:
- What is the most common question that the sales team gets at this state of the journey?
- What objections can you anticipate at this state?
- What is the primary reason that someone leaves the customer journey at this state?
For advice and tips on documenting your customer journey, join the Iterative Marketing Community on LinkedIn.
Don’t forget to check out our next post about documenting how to break the consideration states into more actionable segments.
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