As you plan for next year, don’t forget to factor sales and marketing into the equation.
If you’re like most NSCA members, your strategic planning efforts for 2025 are well under way. You’re thinking about things like business goals and budgets, KPIs, workforce development, succession planning, and the customer experience.
As you plan for next year, don’t forget to factor sales and marketing into the equation. Strong efforts in these areas help you evolve along with the needs and desires of your clients and build long-term relationships that lead to repeat work.
We recently sat down with Chris Peterson, founder and president at Vector Firm; Keith Donahue, senior vice president of sales and marketing at Avidex; and Pat Richter, president at Basepoint Building Automations, to understand what should drive your sales and marketing plans for next year.
If you like the insights and advice you read here, then be sure to listen to the webinar on-demand (titled 5 Ways to Adapt Sales & Marketing for 2025) to hear even more words of wisdom that will help you plan your sales and marketing efforts in 2025 and beyond.
You Must Factor in AI
Business is moving—and fast. This holds true not only for you but also for your customers. And, in many cases, artificial intelligence (AI) is in the driver’s seat. That means that integrators and manufacturers in our industry can’t shy away from it. Instead, they must cautiously learn how to use it to their benefit.
While AI isn’t positioned to take over the jobs of every sales and marketing professional, the people who haven’t bothered to learn how to work with AI may eventually be replaced by people who have.
“The most powerful thing AI brings is the opportunity to differentiate yourself by being real,” explains Peterson. “AI may help you write emails or put presentations together faster, but you’ve got to put your touches on it. Customize it, make it personal, and make it real. That personal touch is going to be come so rare that it will have an impact.”
At Avidex, for example, Donahue explains that one of his colleagues developed an application to screen incoming emails, determine which messages require a response, draft that response, and save it for review. When his colleague has time, he reviews the drafts and modifies and personalizes them accordingly before hitting “send.”
“Time is your most precious and valuable commodity,” explains Donahue. “We don’t want AI to be a distraction to our salespeople, but it can help them refocus their time on what matters most to colleagues and clients.”
Don’t Separate Sales and Marketing—Bring Them Together
Salespeople often act as marketers, and marketers often act like salespeople. Where’s the line? It’s becoming harder to find.
Salespeople have a wealth of information to share, and marketing has an opportunity to tap into these experts to make sure everyone is on the same page when it comes to objectives and messaging.
One way to do this is to find data, such as NSCA’s Electronic Systems Outlook report, that will help you drive your sales and marketing efforts. To optimize your customer approach, marketing and sales must be focused on the right markets—and the right opportunities that exist within those markets. When these teams are in sync, then marketing can create valuable content salespeople can use to connect.
“For the next six months, imagine that your company is going to focus on promoting its managed services,” says Peterson. “Marketing is writing helpful blogs, recording valuable videos, and driving potential customers to your website. What if your salespeople were attending association events and speaking about that same topic? When they conduct prospecting call, what if they were sending the content that your marketing team developed? No matter where it comes from, a potential customer sees a consistent message.”
No matter where you are on your marketing journey, you can make progress toward this goal.
For example, Richter explains, four years ago, Basepoint Building Automations barely had any marketing in place at all. Before it could improve, the company unified its brand.
“We had five locations and three business units, which created a lot siloes we needed to get rid of,” explains Richter. Once that problem was tamed, the sales team went out to uncover the needs of customers. They asked questions, listened intently, and then brought that information back to marketing so they can create content and messaging that addresses those issues.
Meanwhile, Avidex has a robust marketing team. But it noticed a need to change its approach to better connect with customers. To do this, the team identified key personas within prospective customer organizations and tailored messaging accordingly.
“We’re seeing the results,” says Donahue. “We’re spending our marketing resources in such a targeted way that we can measure the ROI and see how salespeople and customers interact with our content.”
Learn Even More about Sales and Marketing
While these are two of the critical sales and marketing points covered in the webinar, there’s lots more to learn about:
- The changing role of sales engineers as clients no longer rely on humans to gather information. “Would your customers pay you for your sales call? That’s what your mindset needs to be,” explains Peterson. “You’ve got to be so competent and bring such value to a sales call that customers would actually write you a check because they learned so much.”
- How to properly build a managed services foundation to grow sales accordingly. “Are you attaching an offer for an extended warranty or a service contract on every new system you sell? What is your win rate? We measure success in two ways: new service sales as a percent of new system sales, as well as recurring service as a percent of total revenue,” explains Donahue. “Everyone should know what your metrics are and what your goals are for growth.”
- How to overcome economic uncertainty. “You can’t predict the future,” says Richter, “but you also can’t stick your head in the sand. Recognize what’s happening with the economy, but don’t spend too much energy on it. Just keep doing what you’re doing.”
Remember: If you liked the insights and advice here, then be sure to listen to the webinar on-demand (titled 5 Ways to Adapt Sales & Marketing for 2025) to plan your sales and marketing efforts in 2025 and beyond.
