Your marketing team is responsible for many different marketing channels – from the company website to e-mail campaigns to social media and beyond. But, have you ever considered that your company’s sales reps are potentially one of the most important marketing channels for your brand? It makes sense on the face of it, but it’s not how we have historically viewed sales reps. 

It’s traditionally been very difficult to measure customer engagement with sales reps. Subjective anecdotes and an inability to collect reliable data lead to sales activities being treated as something entirely separate from marketing. 

But, thanks to modern digital sales enablement tools, marketers can now measure just about any part of the customer journey they can imagine, which begs the question:

If you aren’t measuring your sales reps the same way you measure other channels, how do you know if it’s a good way to engage customers?

The effectiveness of sales reps and their ability to engage customers should be measured like any other marketing channel. And, there’s never been a better time to start measuring. Here’s why.

It No Longer Takes a Lot of Data Entry to Become a Data-Driven Marketing & Sales Team

Until recently, modernizing sales processes and becoming more data-driven meant asking the team to do a lot of data entry. It was a cumbersome undertaking that felt like it required overhauling the entire sales process. 

Fortunately, this labor-intensive step is no longer necessary. With sales enablement tools like StorySlab that automatically sync conversation data with your current CRM, the task of collecting the data is done for you. 

StorySlab is designed to plug into your existing sales process and collect data without dramatically changing your sales reps’ processes or styles. Sales reps can focus on engaging with the customer, while you receive the stats you need to make meaningful improvements.

Marketers and Sales Reps Need Data to Modernize and Meet the Demands of Today’s Customers

To market your product or service effectively, you know you need hard data about how and when customers engage with your marketing content. The more information you have, the better your content can be. Plus, engagement data and the ability to know when a customer has opened an e-mail or digital leave-behind can give you a significant timing advantage. 

At the same time, sales reps need processes to be data-driven just as much as the marketing team. Because we’re living in a time of great uncertainty, sales reps need to be ready for anything. Customers may want to meet virtually or in-person, formally or informally – and sales reps need modern tools to help them meet these demands. 

Luckily, sales enablement tools are available to meet both the needs of marketers and sales teams. StorySlab, for instance, optimizes real-time customer interactions by providing the insights you need about customer engagement and content usage while also giving sales reps online and offline access to the collateral and tools they need to engage in consultative sales conversations wherever they take place.

Sales Reps Are Already A Marketing Channel – It’s Time to Measure Them Accordingly

The time when marketers could get by treating sales reps as ancillary to marketing lead generation and nurturing campaigns is over. Customer engagement with sales reps can be easily measured along side all of the other marketing channels to provide a full picture of the customer journey as well as provide important insights for improving the performance of your sales team.

If you’re interested in learning more about how StorySlab can simplify your transition to a data-driven organization, one of our team members can give you a tour of the features and discuss your company’s needs. Book your demo today.