At FounderScale, we have a foundational belief. We feel that businesses shouldn’t just post content. Instead, businesses should also use content. Often, B2B marketing teams keep a steady stream of new content online. But, most sales leaders aren’t part of the process. This can result in missed sales opportunities. Our belief is that content isn’t only for sales or marketing. We believe the best content is for both sales and marketing. This belief is why we follow Account-Based Marketing best practices for sales and marketing alignment.
To better understand the concept, let’s start with the typical marketing view of webinars. Webinars are a proven resource that both sales and marketing teams can use to gain momentum. Yet, many organizations only view webinars as a marketing tool. Yes, marketing usually owns the execution of webinars. The marketing team may use various tools to drive webinar participation, such as:
- Social media
- Opt-in newsletter lists
- Ad campaigns
Marketing is also often tasked with understanding the target audience of these webinars. They will gather data to develop future relevant content. These all meaningful and important tasks — but, these efforts are only 50% of the full puzzle. To optimize outcomes, every webinar initiative should also include sales teams.
B2B webinars absolutely have marketing-specific value. However, webinars are also a sales engagement event that can help an organization:
- Start relationships
- Drive new prospects into the pipeline
- Reinvigorate stalled deals
At FounderScale, we’ve seen B2B webinar attendance increase by up to 22.6% when pairing one-to-one sales outreach with marketing efforts.
Using Webinars To Increase Sales and Marketing Alignment
One of the best ways to optimize sales and marketing alignment is to encourage collaboration between both teams throughout the entire initiative. Both sales and marketing can work together to identify trending webinar topics. Both teams can also leverage their combined insight to find guest speakers.
3 Ways to Include Sales Teams in Your Webinars
While sales and marketing alignment is important, the efforts between both groups often look different. We’ve already mentioned some of the marketing tasks that go into promoting participation in each event. Sales enablement tactics will look a little different. There are three key ways companies can leverage B2B webinars to increase sales enablement.
1. Email Sequences
Sales professionals can leverage upcoming B2B webinars to increase outbound prospecting activity. Proactive salespeople are constantly strategizing new reasons to reach out to prospects. B2B webinars offer something of value to prospects. Sending an email and following-up with the upcoming event’s details offers a no-pitch way to get on people’s radars.
2. Deal Touchpoints 
Showing value and industry expertise with people already in your pipeline is important. Invite prospects in your pipeline to an upcoming webinar to prove that you aren’t only reaching out when looking for a sale.
3. On-Demand
Even after a webinar has happened, sales and marketing teams should have access to the asset. Sales professionals can send these webinars on a one-on-one on-demand basis to existing clients as the need arises.
Bottom line — webinars don’t live in sales or marketing. These digital assets are a sales enablement platform that should be leveraged by both organizations to maximize the effort and opportunity presented through webinars.
Contact FounderScale Today
FounderScale develops dynamic sales and marketing alignment solutions to help B2B business optimize revenue opportunities. Contact us today to learn more.
How to Increase B2B Sales Engagement by 667%
Engaging people on a human-to-human level to provide experiences and education is one of the few long-term sustainable lead generation methods that you can employ. Many other methods like contact and pitch may provide a certain level of results but the efficiency and cost are less than ideal. To maximize sales engagement platforms, you have a number of different options ranging from webinars to group lunch and learns which provide 667% higher engagement than cold outreach to set a meeting.
Read our new mini-book to learn real-world strategies to boost sales engagement by 667%.
