Why you should be talking to your sales team

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One of the main ingredients for successful copywriting is information.

The more you know about your audience, the better-equipped you are to persuade them to do whatever it is you want them to do. 

In fact, good information can easily make up for bad writing - but good writing can't make up for bad information.

One of the most best sources of information is your sales team. If you're not talking to your sales team on a regular basis, schedule some time ASAP. Here's why:
 

They know your customers' pain points

Pain points are the things that cause problems for your customers. Pain points that can be solved by your product are reasons to buy that product.

When you're in the ivory tower of a marketing team, you can "drift" a bit, and start to talk about pain points that sound nice, but don't actually connect with your customers (I wrote about this a few months ago). 

Sales people do not have the luxury of drifting. If they don't talk about relevant pain points, they will not close their sales. And if they don't close their sales, they will not be able to pay their rent, mortgages, whatever. 

So ask your salespeople what kind of problems do their leads have, and how your product solves them. Then make sure the answers you get line up with the copy you write. 
 

They know how your customers describe their world

Describing your customers' world in the same way they do helps make your copy more clear. It also helps you build trust, by showing you understand where they come from. 

For example, if you're selling espresso, but your customers always refer to it as "coffee," then you are going to want to refer to your product as coffee. 

The best way to learn this "language" is to talk to customers on a regular basis. You're probably not doing that. But guess who is? Salespeople are. So talk to them. 
 

They're master objection handlers

Your sales people will have a really clear idea of the top 3-5 reasons potential customers are hesitant to buy. They'll also know exactly what to say to handle these objections. 

For example, if customers are frequently worried that your product is going to fall apart, salespeople might give them assurances by talking about the 5-year warranty. Or something like that. 

Once you know these objections, and how to handle them, you can start building these assurances in to your copy. That makes your copy do a better job of persuading people to buy. 

Salespeople can also tell you which objections are impossible to overcome.

As an absurd example, if you were selling motorcycles, and a common objection was "I need to drive my family of 5 around," then the only way to overcome that is to advise the customer to take their business elsewhere. 

By learning these insurmountable objections beforehand, you can start building them into your copy, so you filter out people who are never going to buy before the sales team picks up the phone. 
 

They can give real feedback on the stuff you produce

Marketing teams love to produce stuff. Brochures. One-pagers. Slide decks. You name it. 

But how much of this stuff is getting used, and how much of this stuff is gathering dust? That's a question you can't really answer until you talk to sales people. 

(And if you haven't been talking to salespeople, I guarantee you're not going to like the answer). 
 

Wrap it up

If you're not talking to your sales team, change that today. See if you can go to their weekly meeting to listen in. Take a few of them out for a beer or a coffee. Pick their brains and put what you find in your next landing page, email sequence or case study. You won't regret it.

Let me know how you get on.

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Photo by Cytonn Photography on Unsplash