Empathy Drives Revenue: Humanising Sales & Marketing for Results

Paul Cruise, Head of Sales Performance at Flume Sales Training, talks about the power of a buyer-led approach to successful sales and marketing. 

In today’s fast-paced and competitive market, the synergy between sales and marketing is more important than ever. I want to share my insights on how humanising these functions can drive results.

Aligning Sales and Marketing

One of the biggest challenges I see in aligning sales and marketing is ensuring both teams focus on the customer rather than themselves. It’s important for sales and marketing to approach everything from the point of view of the customer. Too often, they don’t, and spend too much time thinking about themselves and their own business, products and services. This drives siloed thinking and poor decision making. As soon as you align and put the customer at the centre of what you do, good stuff happens.

It pains me to say it, but we should all take a lesson from Amazon here. Bezos famously has an empty seat at the board table to represent the customer to ensure they keep them at the centre of the decision-making processes. Sales and marketing teams need to work together and do the same.

Understanding the Customer

Too many businesses remain obsessed with their products rather than their customers. At best, they understand the businesses they sell to, but rarely do they understand the actual buyers, let alone the wider decision-making group.

The solution lies in leveraging the insights gathered by salespeople, who are uniquely positioned to build comprehensive information about their ideal customer profile (ICP). Sharing this information across the organisation and keeping it up-to-date is vital.

The Power of a Buyer-Led Approach

At Flume, we’ve worked with many sales teams to help them transition from a sales-led approach to a buyer-led approach, touching every stage of the sales process. This change has led to numerous successes, including more opportunities, better win rates, higher average order values, and shorter sales cycles. It really can be transformative.

This shift involves tailoring the sales process to meet the buyer’s needs at every stage, from initial outreach to helping the buyer present the solution to their decision-making group. This comprehensive approach ensures that the sales process is aligned with the buyer’s journey, leading to more successful outcomes.

Supporting Salespeople in a Changing Landscape

Despite the benefits of a humanised approach, many salespeople are not adequately supported to focus on it. Much has changed since my early days in sales, where intensive training and ongoing coaching was the norm. Today, with hybrid working and more complex solutions to sell, salespeople often face a “sink or swim” culture. When that’s the case, everybody loses—including the customer.

To address this, sales teams should receive great coaching and training, and that should be buyer-centric rather than seller-centric. This is what transforms average performers into top performers, and ultimately helps teams win.

Why empathy drives revenue

Empathy drives revenue by fostering a customer-centric approach that humanises sales and marketing efforts. By aligning these functions, adopting a buyer-led approach, supporting salespeople with proper training, and deeply understanding the customer, businesses can transform their sales performance. Putting the customer at the heart of all decisions not only enhances collaboration between sales and marketing but also drives significant commercial benefits. The bonus: it shouldn’t be that hard to do.

By Paul Cruise, Head of Sales Performance at Flume Training