If your company has both a sales and marketing department, both teams should be aligned and working towards the same goal. While the activity of a marketing team and a sales team differs, both are working towards a common goal: to grow the company and maximize revenue.
While it may seem obvious that sales and marketing teams should work together to achieve goals, the lack of alignment between the two divisions continues to be a problem across many organizations. While the two teams are oftentimes focused on the same products or services or working towards the same common goals, a rivalry sometimes develops between the teams.
Marketing will say sales reps aren’t taking full advantage of all the leads they generate.
Sales will say that marketing isn’t producing enough qualified leads for them.
And the finger-pointing game continues. Meanwhile, business goals aren’t aligned and things aren’t getting done.
Here’s how marketing and sales alignment leads to sales success and how the two teams can align for maximized growth.
Marketing and Sales Alignment = Inside Sales Success
Aligning your sales and marketing strategies will help your sales organization achieve sales success. How? Because aligning the two strategies is far more powerful than keeping them separate. According to the Aberdeen Group, successfully aligning sales and marketing can help you:
- Generate 32% higher revenue
- Retain 36% more customers
- Achieve 38% higher win rates
Many businesses still treat marketing and sales as two separate entities, when in reality, they can achieve so much more together. Strong alignment between sales and marketing helps you generate more leads, shorten sales cycles, retain more customers, and make better forecasts.
When marketing and sales work together, your business can:
- Close more sales and increase your customer base
- More easily track results and make high-impact changes
- Create higher brand awareness
- Close bigger deals
- Increase business revenue and experience faster growth
- Experience faster profit growth
How Does Marketing Support Sales? And Vice Versa?
Now that we know marketing and sales alignment leads to organizational success and maximized growth, how can you make sure your business is aligning the two divisions properly? The first step is to develop a sales support marketing strategy. This is a document that defines what tools and methods are used to help your sales professionals and marketing teams provide exceptional customer service. It defines important marketing strategies and helps you to develop strong customer relationships, ultimately increasing revenue and growing business.
It’s also important to create a single buyer’s journey or buying process that all customers go through. There shouldn’t be two separate experiences for your prospects; instead, teams should work together to take customers through the sales funnel. From awareness to purchase, every step should be mapped out so teams are aligned. A great way to keep teams on track and on the same page is by using a CRM platform to track customer information and communication.
Once you create a sales support marketing strategy and a single buyer’s journey, here are a few more ways your sales and marketing can support each other to achieve goals.
1. Hold Regular Meetings Between Departments
Holding regular meetings between sales and marketing teams is crucial if you want to align strategies and be successful. First and foremost, you must develop a buyer’s persona together and identify what your ideal customer looks like. Once both teams understand this, you’ll be able to bring in more customers because both teams will have a better idea of what your ideal customer needs and wants in order to make a purchase.
From there, hold weekly meetings to make sure all employees are on the same page. Sales can update everyone on what markets they’re attacking, what industries are a top priority for them. Marketing can also find out where sales reps are getting hung up in their process so that marketing can help them. For example, if they’re pitching but not seeing much communication after, marketing can work on a post-pitch campaign and find ways to help improve the nurturing process.
2. Work on Creating Content Together
While sales professionals are making cold calls and developing strong customer relationships, your marketing team should be creating valuable content behind the scenes. Sending content to prospects can be extremely valuable and a great way to shorten the sales process. If a prospect likes what you are sending them, you may be able to convert them into a customer much quicker.
Sales and marketing can align to create various types of content, including:
- Case studies or previous customer success stories
- Thought leadership pieces and informational blogs
- Infographics with relevant industry statistics
The sooner a lead sees you as a trusted resource, the sooner you can convert them into a loyal customer. If your marketing team is already generating content to increase leads, why not align your strategy and have them create content specifically for the prospects you are talking to?
3. Send Out a Weekly Digest Report
Valuable content isn’t so valuable if the sales team doesn’t know it exists. A weekly digest report can provide your sales team with visibility into the marketing department’s work. It informs your sales team of the latest and greatest marketing assets available to them to use in their sales processes such as case studies, relevant blog content, videos, new pages on your website, and more.
It’s All About Teamwork
Teamwork makes the dream work. Abstrakt understands this better than anyone, and we have our teams properly aligned so that we can help you grow your customer base. As an experienced business growth company, we use proven growth strategies to boost your sales and increase brand awareness for potential customers in your market.
Interested in what our properly aligned B2B appointment setting and marketing services can do for your business? Reach out to our team today.
