If you’re a sales professional, then you are likely looking for employment in a sales-based organization. These companies use persuasive strategies, and differ from marketing companies. However, if you’re looking to work as a salesperson along with a marketing team, here are some options for your career.
Sales-Led Organizations
A sales-led organization uses a salesperson to close deals and provides them with the necessary materials to succeed. Companies like this use the approach of hiring sales reps who are exceptional at making cold calls to achieve their goals. It allows a salesperson to create a pitch based on a customer’s specific needs, and to be able to develop an individual solution for them. Small businesses are more likely to be sales-led, as they do not have the brand awareness that larger companies do, which is why they value more of a personal strategy.
When you work at a sales-based organization, you will be mostly concerned with how many sales you acquire, as that is how your performance will be evaluated. Some sales strategies that will help you meet these goals are to create collateral (like datasheets, for instance), or to attend industry events as a way to network and find leads.
Sales-led organizations have been known to work with sales recruiters for hiring the right people, so they can get the best candidates possible. You’ll want to ensure your skills and qualifications match with companies that look like they’d be a good fit for you.
Market-Led Organizations
A market-led organization focuses on educating a potential buyer. If you are curious about market-led organizations, they use approaches that are usually compatible with Business to Consumer (B2C) companies. The main tactic of these organizations is to use content as a means for sales leads.
Marketing collateral includes content like white papers, social media posts, eBooks, and many more that create credibility and establish a business as an industry thought leader. Whereas sales-led organizations use cold calls, market-led organizations use call-to-actions to generate sales. With market-led organizations, the quality of each lead is assessed as it progresses through the company’s sales funnel.
Product-Led Organizations
Product-led organizations offer customers access to their products so that their users can see how it will benefit them. These strategies are usually a good fit for Software as a Service (SaaS) companies, and rely on how a customer uses the product, with the hope it goes viral.
For product-led organizations, they generally offer free or freemium trials, which is a customer acquisition model where they can access part of a software product for free and without a time limit. That way, the product can get to the user and removes the pressure of having to buy the product. This tactic encourages trust between the organization and the consumer. Then, once the user wants to purchase the product, product-led organizations use up-selling methods. That way, once a customer is familiar with the product, they may want additional features.
Now that you know what kind of sales opportunities are out there, and how both sales and marketing relate to each other, you can start applying for jobs that interest you. A wise option is to use a recruiting service that can match you to a position where you would be an ideal fit.
