Certain combinations are destined to work. Peanut butter with jelly. Rachel and Ross. Bad judgments and alcohol. It may come as a surprise, but collaboration between sales and marketing is much more effective than each function operating separately. Each can’t thrive without the other, and your company will reap substantial advantages when both departments are pulling in the same direction.
According to recent survey data, firms with strongly connected sales and marketing teams had 27 percent quicker profit growth and 36 percent greater customer retention. One of the most important factors in a company’s success is how well its marketing and sales departments work together.
Consider these seven reasons why aligning the two functions is so important:
Gaining a deeper knowledge of the consumer
Since marketing and sales are responsible for finding, keeping, and ultimately completing agreements, they must have a common understanding of their target audience. When teams get together, buyer profiles are considerably simpler to develop. At various times in the decision process, you will consult several parties. With an agency such as SalesWorks, you can seamlessly transition from marketing to sales. When marketing and sales have a shared understanding of the factors most likely to sway consumers at each point of the buying process, everyone benefits.
Quality qualified leads
If your marketing and sales staff spend their time and resources on unqualified prospects, they will eventually fail. When sales complain that marketing doesn’t provide enough quality content, marketing will point the blame at sales for not employing the right resources or rushing into weak leads.
Your company will benefit much from seamless information sharing between your sales and marketing departments if they are well coordinated and in constant contact with one another. Your sales staff may provide valuable feedback to the marketing department, helping the latter fine-tune their efforts. However, companies must confront a difficult reality. Regardless of how good their sales and marketing efforts are, just 10 to 15% of leads are converted.
More customer feedback
Marketing and sales work together to learn more about potential customers by talking to and observing them through the purchase process. You can achieve improved conversion and success rates via the coordinated use of consumer data. By exchanging this information, the two groups will be better able to find and connect with the consumers who are most likely to become paying clients. In reality, the sales team can more precisely route leads with a more comprehensive lead record and spend less time choosing which prospects to prioritize.
Maintain your competitive advantage
The most successful marketing groups regularly review the activities of their rivals, including website updates and blog postings, to gauge industry trends and how they stack up against the competition. If your marketing and sales departments work closely, your salespeople will be more aware of the strategies and positions taken by rival companies. When talking to potential customers, your sales force can now confidently and effectively explain why your goods and services are much better than the alternatives.
Better backing from corporate executives
Executives will be more invested in the alignment’s success if they perceive that marketing and sales are a concerted effort to work together. It may include anything from regular reminders of the value of teamwork to the actual allocation of resources toward that purpose. A few attempts to eliminate silos across departments include introducing a unified set of tools and adjusting incentive structures to reflect better and encourage teamwork.
Improved marketing materials
Your sales staff will be bombarded with the same inquiries from prospects to consumers. If the sales department shares this information with the marketing department, the latter will better inform the intended audience with useful material. It might be anything from a series of blog entries to a lengthy ebook. Then, your sales staff may save a lot of time with these effective marketing materials, and your prospects can make more informed selections based on what they’ve learned.
A more specific strategy
Companies that have successfully integrated their sales and marketing efforts are often more long-term and strategic in their outlook. That is to say, they retain their worth throughout time. The organization maximizes marketing and sales effectiveness by proactively preparing for, encouraging, and facilitating alignment.
When sales and marketing come together around a shared vision for growing revenue, they are better able to formulate and roll out coordinated efforts to drive that growth. After that, businesses may use the abundance of new information and streamlined processes made possible by the alignment to fine-tune and enhance their overarching development plan.
The finest long-term vision, objectives, and strategies can only be identified and implemented if sales and marketing are in sync. The first step in fixing a misalignment between marketing and sales is identifying the causes.
