The Fifth P of the Marketing Mix

Every business student at one point learns the Four P’s of the marketing mix: product, price, place, promotion. But according to Sirius Decisions analyst Marisa Kopec, there’s room for another P. The fifth P in the marketing mix is productivity, specifically sales productivity. How exactly does sales productivity fall under marketing’s domain? It all comes down to sales enablement and marketing’s role in this area is expanding. Marketers now need to start thinking about sales enablement skills and techniques – getting sales reps the knowledge they need (efficiently) to ultimately drive more revenue for the business.

For example, in many organizations, sales frequently turn to outdated content because it’s comfortable. But in the era of sales and marketing alignment, marketing is working closely with sales by contributing updated content to give reps the necessary edge.

During yesterday’s sales enablement session at the Sirius Decisions Summit, Kopec discussed the need for fresh, timely content and for this content to align with the customer’s buying process. Marketing and sales typically have boatloads of content for the beginning of the buyer’s journey, but as buyers move through the stages, good content is hard to come by. One easy fix is to design content for buyers at later stages.

While content creation is critical for sales enablement, Kopec reminds marketers to think about the best way to target this content to sales reps for increased adoption. Marketers know how to target different messages to different audiences and they should do the same with sales reps.

When launching a new product for example, marketers should think about the sales rep audience and segment communications accordingly. Communications should be crafted and programs created with the various rep personas in mind.

Targeted communication to the reps will result in improved adoption of marketing content which leads to improved sales productivity. Marketing will continue to play a large role in sales enablement, transferring important knowledge to sales. With this knowledge, sales productivity increases and revenue is sure to follow. Bring on the fifth P.