I recently heard a sales trainer (someone I learn from and who’s excellent at what they do) coach sellers on how to write outbound. Part of their advice:
“Use your sales voice, not your marketing voice.”
Then they gave examples of each:
The marketing voice used a basic value prop (something like “We’re a [category] that [benefit] for [audience]”).
The sales voice used a problem-agitation-solution (PAS) framework.
It’s smart advice. And I’ve been mulling over why the sales trainer had to differentiate the “marketing voice” from the “selling voice” to begin with. Because, for example, PAS is a copywriting framework we use all. the. time. in marketing deliverables.
But the advice makes sense in a world where "marketing voice" has come to mean the words that do something other than sell, like build awareness, nurture or educate.
Spoiler: building awareness, nurturing and educating are all part of selling.
Yet, the default for how a B2B brand gets built still seems to assume marketing and sales are two distinctly different things, where marketing markets and sales sells.
But, in sales-led B2B, marketing's job is to pre-sell.
Pre-selling isn't something distinctly different or disconnected from selling. It's all connected. All part of the same motion. And marketing isn’t doing its job if the “marketing voice” isn't also a “selling voice.”
So the smart workaround the sales trainer provides (to teach reps to drop the “marketing voice”) treats the symptom. Whereas the fix I'd argue for treats the cause:
Build the brand voice with sales and conversion rate optimization sitting at the core, so the marketing voice and the sales voice are the same. This approach results in less translation for internal teams to execute, and it’ll provide a more cohesive experience to prospective buyers. AND that experience is also oriented to nudge the prospective buyer forward in their buying journey. (It’s a win-win-win.)
To build a brand with sales and conversion rate optimization sitting at the core is an intentional decision your team needs to make. And, if you make that decision, it needs to be codified for the team to use, in your messaging strategy and in your brand voice guide.
For example, when we write a brand voice guide, we start with the brand's behavioral rules (i.e., the actual rules that govern how the brand behaves when it makes claims, handles a skeptical reader, etc.). A lot of those rules have conversion better practices baked in.
So, we might write rules like these into a brand's behavioral rules:
Outcome before feature. Lead with what changes in the reader's life, then use the product detail as the mechanism or evidence that you can deliver the outcome.
Proof follows every promise. Every claim is followed by a specific outcome, a named result, a measurable comparison. (Here’s an entire issue on how a brand proves itself is a brand decision, not a copy nitpick.)
Anticipate the buyer's objections, then overcome them. Your buyer has been burned before and likely already has a solution that sort of works, so don't assume they’ll buy in. Instead, surface the objection, then give specific proof that makes taking the next step the reasonable conclusion. (Objection handling 101, used as a brand behavioral rule.)
None of these read as "conversion rate optimization." They read as brand rules. (They can even be used in self-edit checklists.)
Yet, because most brand voice guides stop at just a handful of useless adjectives, many teams are stuck in copy review chaos because only one or two people on the team “know” the brand voice. And SDRs need to guess their way through translating the “marketing voice” into a “sales voice.”
On the flipside, when conversion thinking is built into how the brand behaves, following the brand guide produces high-converting, on-brand messages by default. That is the belief underneath it all.
Conversion rate optimization isn't just a page-level effort, it's a brand-level one.
You shouldn’t bolt CRO onto the asset at the end. Instead, build conversion optimization into the foundation of the brand, so every asset (page, email, message, ad, etc.) inherits it.
Build the brand so selling is at the foundation (and messaging framework workarounds for your SDRs become unnecessary).
‘Til next week,
Carolyn
P.S. Later this month, I’ll be releasing an SLG healthcare SaaS messaging trends and opportunities report that I co-authored:
The dataset includes 121 VC-backed healthcare SaaS homepage hero sections.
Those heroes were analyzed by classifying 43 data points across 20 aspects of messaging and positioning.
The data is synthesized to explain where the industry converges, and where there are opportunities to stand out.
If this report sounds like something your team could use, join the waitlist. You’ll get the report the moment it's live.
Before you go…
My firm (Boxcar) helps sales-led B2B software companies turn their proven sales motion into a clear messaging strategy that generates more qualified leads.
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