Why story consistency between sales and marketing is so important

Imagine you hear one thing in an email, and another message entirely when you finally get on the phone with a salesperson.

Imagine that the salesperson tells you one thing, but the onboarding and product experience is completely different.

I’m guessing you don’t have to work hard to imagine this. It’s too often the reality for products & services we buy. Is it the reality for what you sell too?

Departments that work in silos – sales, marketing, onboarding, customer support – are more likely to come up with their own stories to get what they want. Problem is, those messages are optimized to improve conversion within that specific, departmental function only. If the downstream message conflicts with what the prospect or customer heard before, it will actually decrease conversion rates. Inconsistent storytelling will constrict your ability to sell and create a higher customer lifetime value.

This is a significant conversion killer for many organizations, and it’s hard to isolate as a variable causing lower sales and/or customer success. But your customer doesn’t care about sales vs. marketing vs. customer support. The more you can make those internal, organizational differences seamless or transparent, the less friction there is between the customer and the sale. This goes for processes, lead handling, messaging and more.

It all starts with the story. New customers heard something that got their attention and made them take the first step towards you. Spend more time thinking about what you want that message to be, what that story says about the customer, their problems, their pain and needs, and ideal outcomes. Then make sure that story flows consistently through the organization, reinforcing key points at each critical stage of sales, onboarding and long-term success.