Why Sales and Marketing need to Collaborate to help a Business Grow
Sales and marketing are both working towards the same goal: securing business and helping their company grow.
People in Marketing spend all day colouring stuff in.
Hear that one before? Well, chances are someone in a sales role who has never received anything remotely like a lead from a marketing team, was in no doubt responsible for telling you this.
Is it true? Well, the marketing world is a colourful place - but no, it's not true. But it is clear why so many of those in sales appears to be let down by marketing teams and professionals if they are unheard and not celebrating with their needs and efforts.
Sales and marketing are both working towards the same goal: securing business and helping their company grow. Although both teams share the same business goal very often they don’t get along, at times reminding of two rivals finger-pointing at each other for not doing things right.
Marketing people blame sales for not taking advantage of all the leads they generate and the content they create. The sales team, on the other hand, think that marketing is not producing enough sales-ready, good quality leads. They often also complain about the content, not being relevant to their clients.
If you ask most salespeople what marketing is for, they would say it’s just a nudge in the right direction for leads. But this helps to underline how sales and marketing can work together.
The truth is, marketing can be much more than that. With input from the sales team, sales and marketing can devise a strategy to seamlessly transport the customer through the entire buying cycle, from awareness right down to finalising the sale.
Marketing can warm up the customer before allowing the sales team to take over to convert the warmed up lead into a customer, making the sales team’s job much easier and increasing the number of leads converted.
By working together, sales and marketing teams can jointly achieve business success. Let's look at the 6 ways they can do this:
- Work on creating relevant content together - Sales have a voice. Let it be heard and let the teams work together to create the right promotional message
- Analyse the customer journey and agree on the buying cycle - Why have different plans and strategies? Working together delivers the same results for the business
- Communication and customer feedback - Communication is a massive failure for many businesses, but no chat between sales and marketing is an even bigger worry. Getting feedback from customers supports both departments
- Develop buyer personas together - Build your perfect customer profile and outline their personal buying habits together - both your voices need to be heard
- Set common KPI's and sync measurement criteria - KPI's are built around business success that works in both sales and marketing - by syncing measurements together you are team building to work closely together to achieve more
- Speak with one voice - Let one person be responsible for both parties - but also be committed to both projects
Sales only works with good marketing - marketing can only achieve its goals with good sales. So yes, colouring in together is going to help your business grow.