Jeff Berardi on Aligning Marketing and Sales – Time To Get Great At Business Development

Mo asks Jeff Berardi: Tell us the story of the time where you realized that business development was great.

• Jeff first realized the importance of business development in the marketing class at business school.
• The first question his professor asked was “Who here is interested in pursuing a career in marketing? And who here is interested in pursuing a career in sales?” The majority of the class had their hands up for the first part and not the second part, and that was the first lesson of the class.
• If you’re thinking about marketing and you don’t have a clear understanding and appreciation for sales you have a fundamental disconnect. Marketing is meant to drive sales.
• Where a lot of organizations fail is turning the one-to-many marketing experience into one-to-one sales conversations.
• Nobody hires someone after they give a speech, they have to talk with them about how they can solve their problems.
• When Jeff took over as CMO, he introduced the organization’s first business development group. A lot of the difficulty an organization faces is when marketing and sales are not in alignment and are treated as completely separate activities.
• Jeff didn’t just publish unique content. He created events around the content and a follow-up process for turning it into actionable conversations.
• The key is to work backwards from the goal of the campaign. For Jeff, that meant showcasing their expertise to companies that they wanted to work with in Europe. He started off with a survey to understand what is happening with potential clients.
• Once the research was conducted, they discovered that some issues were local and some were more widespread, but no matter the scope the research became the basis for the report that could be leveraged in a number of different ways.
• This sort of deep dive research into a client’s problems and needs can be as broad or as narrow as you need it to be.

Mentioned in this Episode:

GrowBIGPlaybook.com

jberardi@baretzbrunelle.com

Jeff Berardi on LinkedIn

Jeff Berardi's Bio