Sales is often an uphill battle every week, month, quarter and year. Any tool or process that can help to make the job easier is something that salespeople should encourage – and employee brand advocates are one of these initiatives. Find out why your organization needs employee brand advocacy to drive sales results up.
1. Advocates Love to Talk About the Brand
The very nature of advocates is that they want to share information about the brand or product. When you have an entire organization working together to share your organization’s products and values, awareness will grow much faster. Sales jobs are tougher when the prospect has never heard of your organization, so if you have more people working to spread the word, sales will have an easier time closing.
2. It Impacts Other Stages of the Customer Journey
Your prospect could come into contact with other employees or elements of your product before they actually become customers. Free trials, customer support, professional services, or other areas of your organization may be part of the customer journey. Therefore, all of these things need to reflect your brand, and these people needs to be advocates. When the prospect has a consistent, positive experience with your organization throughout their entire lifecycle, they are more likely to become customers and remain loyal to you in the long term.
3. Brand Advocates Make Closing a Sale Easier
Most sales reps are aware of the power of customer advocates. However, they are likely not aware that employee advocates are similarly powerful; in fact, leads from employee advocacy are seven times more likely to close. With these stats, every sales rep should be persistent about encouraging brand advocacy within the organization.
4. It Makes Everyone a Sales Person
On paper, only the sales team will be salespeople; however, when employees are brand advocates, they effectively become salespeople too. They are able to talk knowledgeably to others in their network about the benefits of your product or service, and bring new business to the organization. When the sales team has aggressive targets to hit every month, they will appreciate a few unofficial team members bringing in new business.
5. Brand Advocacy Breeds Loyalty
Brand advocacy is important in many ways, but it is, above all, a signal of health. If your employees are brand advocates, your organization is more likely to become a positive working environment and your products are more likely to be good. When your organization is positive and your products are good, your employees are more likely to become advocates. This self-fulling prophecy creates loyalty both within your organization and your customer base. It will help the sales team both in their day-to-day life at the company and in their sales numbers, which is why salespeople should encourage advocacy.
The entire organization is involved with building a functional product or service and bringing it to the market. When other parts of the organization can be involved with selling it, the whole company improves.
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