Why Your Marketing Messaging Needs a Makeover for Rocketing Engagement with Michelle Giardinello and Elizabeth Roche

How Can You Bridge the Sales and Marketing Gap?

Liz and Michelle collaborated to integrate ValueSelling’s methodology into Kimberly-Clark Professional’s sales and marketing processes. The main goal was to ensure that sales and marketing spoke the same language and were addressing customer issues rather than highlighting product features. While challenging, by incorporating personalized sessions for different teams, the feedback was positive, helping bridge internal gaps, streamline communication, and adapt the company’s messaging to be more problem-centric.

“Presenting a new methodology to salespeople, even marketers can be a little jarring. Okay, here’s the flavor of the week. How is this really going to help me, and what is it going to do for me and coming from sales? I think what was really important was to actively share how these concepts were landing with individuals”.

Michelle Giardinello, Senior Customer Marketing Manager of Healthcare at Kimberly-Clark Professional

Maximizing Engagement

Presenting new methodologies to salespeople and marketers requires personalization to reach maximum effectiveness. During consulting sessions, actively assess individual needs and tailor your approach to specific teams. Another great shift for Kimberly-Clark Professional was changing its trade show strategies. As a result, instead of highlighting new features, the brand focused on business issues, which resulted in a 234% increase in leads at a major healthcare show.

“Teaching marketers to understand how to tell stories and write stories for sales; in the value selling world, we call these reference stories and value stories, but really they’re just heroes’ journey stories. So having that template for marketers to always be writing a hero’s journey and keep the story short is another little tool. So, make sure you have those job accelerators and those key job tools available so that you can really make this run”.

Elizabeth Roche, Managing Partner at ValueSelling Associates

The Power of Problem-Solving and Value Selling in Marketing

Kimberly-Clark Professional’s ICON Dispenser Collection offers a unique feature where the face plate can be tailored for various aesthetics or messages. Initially perceived as a simple product improvement, the team realized its potential in handling different business needs. After running a targeted ad campaign focused on solving real business problems, the company saw an 186% click-through rate increase.

“We saw an 186% increase in our click-through rate on this campaign because we truly thought about business issues and the value of maybe a solution that we didn’t quite know the problem that it truly solved”.

Michelle Giardinello, Senior Customer Marketing Manager of Healthcare at Kimberly-Clark Professional

‍

Now that you know why focusing on solving real business issues is key to revenue growth, check out the full list of episodes at The B2B Revenue Executive Experience, and instructions on how to rate and review the show are here.

‍