eBusiness Weekly
Robert Gonye
Marketing and sales teams may work for the same company, but they behave like enemies way too frequently.
Each unit usually points lots of complaints to the other party, but the truth is such an approach can only harm the business both short and long-term especially now where teamwork and reliability on information are very key.
According to the workplace report, teams that fail to align sales and marketing end up wasting 50 percent of time on poor prospects. But if you take a different turn, the results become much better.
A study reveals that almost 90 percent of sales and marketing leaders say collaboration between sales and marketing enables critical business growth.
Now, the only question is how to strengthen your company through sales marketing alignment. In our shared article we will indent to help you with that by pointing out some of the key ways to do it successfully.
Winning ways on aligning
sales and marketing
Before we begin discussing our tips, we need to define the very concept of sales-marketing alignment and explain what it really means.
Sales and marketing alignment describes the goal of the two teams working with better collaboration, more transparency, better communication, and greater efficiency.
For example, the best essay writing service actually has two teams working together all the time to ensure the highest level of customer experience and grow sales.
If you want to align marketing and sales, you should follow these simple mechanisms:
1. Acknowledge the need
for collaboration
The first thing you and your team need to do is to acknowledge the need for collaboration between sales and marketing departments. This is vital because most companies pretend there’s no elephant in the room and so they keep stagnating.
What should be the initial discussion topics? Here are a few key suggestions:
Identify the pros and cons of both unites
Discuss possible solutions and define the alignment plan
Meet regularly to keep adjusting the plan and solidify the alignment process
2. Identify an ideal buyer persona
We’ve seen this problem too many times, so the next tip is to pay attention and identify an ideal buyer persona that your sales and marketing teams can concentrate on.
This issue is particularly frequent among sales agents because they tend to chase just about anyone with enough money to purchase the product or service.
This is where marketing representatives should step in and define the traits of a buyer persona with all of its traits and characteristics. That way, both units can target the same sort of client, and nurture verified leads only.
3. Define metrics that suit
both departments
Tip three is also important because it enables the entire organisation to cooperate closely and work towards the same business objective.
A renowned sales analyst explained how to define metrics that suit both departments: “The goal of marketing teams should be to pinpoint potential customers and turn them into verified leads with high-quality content. After that, sales reps can take over and turn verified leads to full-time customers.”
This means that the most important KPIs should be lead quality for marketing and the number of deals closed for sales teams, but you can adjust it to suit the nature of your business.
4. Ensure consistent sales and marketing messages
Sales and marketing teams often speak a totally different language, which makes clients confused and unable to understand the message. To avoid this problem, you must pay attention to the sales and marketing jargon and teach your staff to use the same vocabulary when speaking about certain products and/or services.
5. Create quality content for every stage of the sales funnel
Another task for your marketing team is to create high-quality content for every stage of the sales funnel. At the same time, sales agents should know when to use which content format to drive user engagement. Generally speaking, you should divide the content into three categories:
Top of the funnel: Lead generation blog posts, quizzes, infographics, statistical reports, and FAQs
Middle of the funnel: Whitepapers, eBooks, webinars, and case studies
Bottom of the funnel: Free trials and incentives
6. Make use of customer feedback
If you are still not sure how to align sales and marketing, perhaps you should turn to the people who understand your services the best. Of course, we are talking about your customers because they can give you the right feedback and tell you how to improve.
You can find users’ comments almost everywhere — in business emails, customer service inquiries, social media posts, face-to-face interactions, and similar. Another option is to organise an online survey and ask customers to share their insights with you.
7. Send targeted messages
to increase loyalty
Finally, your goals should be to turn one-time buyers into recurring customers. Sales and marketing agents can make it work if they cooperate closely and identify the best way to build relationships with the existing customers.
The point is to send personalised messages that address a given client’s interests, purchasing history, problems, and demands.
The bottom line
Sales-marketing alignment is not just another business myth, but rather a genuine necessity that gives a big boost to your organisation.
If you try and follow the tips we discussed above, you can achieve a much higher level of cooperation between your departments and generate superior sales results in the long run.
Are you ready to give it a try?
Robert Gonye is a business growth expert and influencer. He writes in his capacity. For comments and views: [email protected]
