The ultimate goal of both sales and marketing departments is revenue production and growth. Despite this, the two departments don’t usually spend enough effort synchronising their objectives. Marketing teams may measure performance in terms of lead numbers, whereas sales teams may be more concerned with lead quality or the possibility that these leads will convert into paying clients.
This misalignment has caused friction between these two departments. It also causes businesses to fail sales targets. As a result, several businesses have begun to align their marketing and sales departments. These are sometimes referred to as revenue teams. These businesses keep the bottom line in mind by aligning sales and marketing efforts.
It might be difficult for a marketer to navigate a shift toward marketing and sales alignment. You may need to make changes in your day-to-day work. Here are a few ways marketers may collaborate with sales teams to improve alignment and revenue targets.
Why is it important to align marketing and sales?
When marketers and salespeople collaborate effectively and synchronise their processes, both teams benefit.
Improved lead management
The majority of your junior sales team’s time is likely spent qualifying leads. To decide whether leads have the potential to become customers, they use an integrated CRM marketing automation system along with sales, online research, email, and phone interactions. Instead of pursuing low-quality leads, sales can use this time to begin warming up leads who match their ideal customer profile.
When sales and marketing collaborate to develop lead scoring and grading models, the gap begins to close. When both departments agree on lead qualification standards, friction between the teams will be reduced, and lead conversion rates will improve. It may take some time and testing to find the optimal lead-qualifying model, but as long as sales and marketing work together, they’ll be able to figure out what works best sooner.
Marketing campaigns can help sales.
After these leads have been qualified, sales teams must convert them into customers. This is where marketing may assist. Marketers can reuse information, programmes, designs, and events into sales collateral. A dedicated product marketer who focuses on leveraging marketing to enable sales is sometimes present. This is especially effective during a sales blitz, which is a type of outbound sales campaign used in account-based marketing (ABM).
A case study can be created from a marketing blog article. A webinar can be turned into a product demonstration. A trade exhibition provides an opportunity for potential customers to meet your team. Marketing gives sales staff extra tools to assist them to guide consumers through the buying process and closing deals by reusing assets. CRM marketing automation helps with carrying out these tasks smoothly.
The most successful programmes are those that are integrated.
Companies are shifting to integrated, hyper-targeted strategies. The buy-in of sales and marketing is critical if your organisation uses account-based marketing. Sales performance, account management experience, fast digital marketing, and innovative thinking are all required for ABM campaigns. Your marketing and sales teams must agree on how the campaign will run, who is responsible for what, and how the campaign will be measured. Your ABM campaign will struggle—or even fail—if your marketing and sales teams aren’t on the same page.
How marketing may improve sales understanding
There are inherent differences between marketing and sales, even when teams are combined. Marketers may do a few things to better understand salespeople and increase the value they provide to sales.
Attend sales calls.
The top marketers do it all the time. Marketers can gain information about the results of their programmes by sitting in on one sales call each week. Find out what makes a good (or terrible) lead, what their main issues are, how they define a problem they’re attempting to address, and whether your marketing materials are resonating with prospects.
Recognize the sales funnel
Marketers understand how the sales funnel works: qualified leads become prospects, then opportunities, and finally customers. Sales personnel, on the other hand, are intimately familiar with their funnel. Perhaps a smoking gun exists that can alert a salesperson to a fantastic potential customer. On the other hand, a red flag may indicate to a sales representative that someone should be excluded right away. Is there anything unique about your company’s sales process? As the marketing team becomes more familiar with these, they may concentrate on creating leads that are more suitable for the funnel.
Your customer interaction process should be integrated and aligned.
We’re all aware that there are numerous sales and marketing solutions available. But what about technologies that link marketing and sales objectives? The first step in aligning marketing and sales outcomes is to use a unified customer relationship management (CRM) system like RisePath CRM. A CRM is used by sales management to organise and manage sales operations and interactions with customers. CRM marketing automation data can be used by marketing to derive customer insights and learnings that can be used to inform programmes and activities.
Examine the sales figures.
We all know that the sales process doesn’t finish once a lead is generated. Your sales team is most certainly using their CRM to collect and analyse a lot of sales data.
Three ways marketers can make salespeople indispensable
There are a few simple strategies for marketers to assist sales in closing more and larger deals if they understand how the sales process works.
Give them content to assist them in warming up leads and clinching transactions.
Create a content strategy that includes blog entries, tutorials, videos, and other resources that sales managers and account executives may share with potential customers. Determine the best ways to repurpose information in various formats so that you can get the most out of each piece of content you create.
Provide social media training and evaluations.
Many sales managers use social media sites like LinkedIn to qualify or prospect leads. Marketers can provide social media accounts with ratings and recommendations, as well as a plan that includes post content and suggested phrasing.
To improve customer involvement, create loyalty programmes.
Once a deal is closed, marketing does not stop. Customer experience can be improved by implementing best practices in customer engagement. This offers salespeople more clout when it comes to presenting clients with benefits.
How can salespeople assist marketers?
Sales teams can also assist marketers in improving programmes, resulting in more qualified leads. Here are a few concrete ways in which salespeople might assist marketing.
Assist marketers in creating an ideal consumer profile.
A perfect customer profile is a detailed description of your company’s ideal customer. Account-based marketing and targeting enterprise-level customers require ideal customer profiles. To understand how the ideal customer progresses through the sales funnel, an ICP relies on sales data. Marketers can use the profile to incorporate both quantitative and qualitative sales data.
Identify customer champions.
Customer testimonials bolster marketing efforts. A current customer’s recommendation is the most effective technique to persuade a new customer. Salespeople can assist marketing in identifying strong customer advocates who can be mentioned on the website and speak at marketing events, in addition to customer success.
Calculate the marketing return on investment.
You won’t know if your marketing campaign is a success until you get regular sales feedback and see the ultimate numbers. Request regular marketing programme data from the sales team, including income produced from specific initiatives. This evaluation will ensure that marketing programmes are aligned with sales achievement. From lead generation to conversion and continuing customer engagement efforts, a single platform for sales and marketing, such as RisePath CRM, may assist keep both teams in sync.
Conclusion
We’re all aiming for ideal sales and marketing coordination. When communicating and organising your collaborative revenue efforts, consider the value that each team may bring to the other. What tools, methods, and cultural components can help your sales and marketing teams collaborate more effectively and overcome challenges?
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