What is ZMOT and How Does it Affect Inside Sales Teams?

Mick Hollison, new CMO at XANT, spent some time during the Inside Sales Virtual Summit discussing the changing relationship between sales and marketing. He also focused on how technology is affecting these changes and gave tips on how to take advantage of the current trends.

Sales Is Fundamentally Changing

More and more sales are conducted virtually. Today, even outside salespeople are using inside sales techniques and technologies to move sales forward at a more rapid pace. In fact, inside sales has grown at approximately 15 times the rate of outside sales since 2010, creating nearly a million new professional jobs during that time period.

Marketing Is Evolving Through Social Media

Marketing has gone from mass media to digital media to social media in just the past few years. Google’s term ZMOT (zero moment of truth) best describes the change that is happening with consumers today.

ZMOT maintains that after buyers view a web page or a banner ad, they then move to social collaboration platforms to read reviews on what they learned. Today’s buyers do a tremendous amount of research long before they ever speak to a salesperson.

What we are learning is that marketing is shaped by these hyper-educated buyers, which changes how CMOs think about investments.

It is very important that marketers are aware of the impressions they leave with their customers and how those things are shared through social collaboration vehicles. What all of this portends is a closeness between marketing and sales that we’ve never really seen before.

Mick’s 8 Self-Evident Truths of Marketing

• Any kind of media must be measurable and attributable.
• Analyze and leverage big data.
• Know the difference between a list and a lead. A list is full of interested targets. A lead has an identified need.
• Don’t treat your lists and leads the same way. Remember, interest is the counterfeit of need.
• Leverage social media to discover which targets are actually leads.
• In Social Media, content rules. Having fresh meaningful content that isn’t self-serving is incredibly important. Follow the simple rule of having two third-party links for every link of your own.
• Transparency wins in today’s social media. You have to give the good, the bad, and the ugly to your prospects, before it surfaces from another source.
• Use social to fan the flames of social. If someone is interested in your product or content, ask them to tweet about it.

To listen to the rest of Mick’s presentation and learn about how predictive analytics and gamification can improve sales productivity, check out the YouTube link above, or register for the event below.

Are there any other rules of marketing you consider self-evident truths? Share your thoughts in the comments below.