For business success, you need both marketing and sales. There’s an article about marketing already on here, along with some about sales. By this point, you know they are both important. Unfortunately, some business owners don’t align sales and marketing.
When these two areas are unaligned, your revenue halts.
You generate leads because your marketing efforts work. But your sellers can’t close those leads. All you’re getting are poor-quality leads that don’t help sales teams meet their quotas. At the same time, your sales team attempts operating beyond the limits of marketing. They search for their own prospects since there aren’t good-quality leads available.
Having the two misaligned results in lost opportunities. These lost opportunities cost you money. And reduce your chances of long-term success.
Marketing and sales are not two separate departments. They are heavily tied together. And they require alignment for optimal functioning.
What is Sales and Marketing Alignment?
There are several sales and marketing strategies that exist. For marketing, you’ll see articles talking about email campaigns and content marketing. Meanwhile, sales strategies involve setting sales goals and maintaining professional relationships.
However, these strategies do not automatically align.
Look at the focus for each area.
Sales focuses on closing deals. It wants long-term client relationships and employs different CRM systems and automation tools. Sales is a short-term process targeting specific customer needs.
Marketing, focuses on generating interest to create leads. Its approach is broad. Rather than targeting specific customer needs, it attracts a wide audience. Marketing uses social media, email automation, and analytics tools.
The two areas are different. They work toward different goals.
Aligning sales and marketing gives each team a shared goal. It ensures that the two areas of your business work together toward this shared goal. Both marketing and sales understand what the other team needs for success. And, since they are both responsible for revenue growth, they work together on all areas.
This cohesive atmosphere between sales and marketing benefits your business. Alignment ensures customers move through the sales funnel fluidly. Customers appreciate the cohesion between different aspects of your business. That means they have a better experience. Aligned marketing and sales teams build strong client-company relationships. They bring in higher-quality leads and boost efficiency of your entire sales process.
Achieving Optimal Alignment
With an understanding of how sales and marketing differs, you can understand what ideal alignment looks like. Alignment is important for your business success. But how do you achieve it, then?
Define Shared Objectives
No matter what you do, you won’t reach optimal alignment without shared objectives. Work with your sales and marketing teams on defining what success looks like. Then, set revenue goals that both teams are responsible for meeting. Do not set a revenue goal for sales, and a separate one for marketing. Set the same quarterly and annual revenue goals for both.
Once you set a set goal, break it down into actionable activities for each team. For instance, give your marketing team a lead-rate goal. And give your sales team a close-rate goal. Ensure both mini-goals correspond to the larger, shared goal you set.
Don’t forget about measuring movement toward the shared goal, either. What good is a goal if you don’t measure it. Collaborate with marketing and sales teams on key metrics. Utilize those metrics for tracking the shared progress toward your revenue goal.
Create Customer Personas
Both your sales and marketing teams need a clear idea of who your target audience is. Without a clear idea of who they are targeting, they will not reach their goals.
As you do this, take information from both teams. Marketing is familiar with the data aspects of your target audience. They know the demographics of who gets interested in your business. And they know digital habits suggesting buyer intent. Sales possesses an understanding of the real-world applicability of this data. They have experience having conversations with customers. And a deeper understanding of why certain prospects say “yes” or “no.”
Sales and marketing teams handle different types of information. It’s natural that they have different data sets. Both data sets are valuable. And both create a unified customer profile.
Develop a Shared Content Strategy
By this point, it’s likely that you have a content strategy. But this strategy is usually for your entire business. For sales and marketing, develop a strategy that addresses lead generation and closing. You want a content strategy that makes customers aware of your business. It also aids them with evaluating the suitability of your company for their problem. Plus, promoting positive decision-making.
Engage both sales and marketing teams in the content development for both sides. Content for marketing looks different than content for sales. But, having both teams involved in content generation means more cohesion and consistency. Sales provides your marketing team with information about weak spots in lead generation. Marketing addresses these weak spots by altering their content generation for superior leads. Both teams find success and are more capable of achieving their shared goal.
Implement Shared Feedback
By this, I mean customer feedback.
Each team receives different types of customer feedback. Sales interact with leads. They get feedback about what marketing aspects work and what don’t. They receive information about what entices customers for purchasing. With shared feedback loops implemented, the sales team provides this feedback to marketing. Thus, marketing has a better idea of where they must adjust their actions.
Meanwhile, marketing gets feedback from customers before they talk to sales. Marketing sees the digital behaviors of customers. And receives feedback about what entices prospects toward pursuing a purchase or not. When prospects never pursue contact with sales, marketing knows. Sales receives this information with optimal alignment. So, sales adjusts their actions to cover weak spots.
Integrate Technology
Use different technologies that grant the same data to marketing and sales teams. Set up shared dashboards for displaying important metrics. And provide training so each team knows how each type of technology operates.
Having shared technologies set up streamlines the collaboration process. Marketing and sales teams have access to different data sets. They also have different mini-goals that are being measured. Technologies that track metrics ensure both teams know when the other is struggling. This promotes their progress toward their shared revenue goal. Marketing hitting its mini-goal is meaningless unless sales also meets theirs. And vice-versa.
Meanwhile, sharing data grants unique insight that promotes effective communication between.
The use of shared technologies does not negate the need for regular communication. Marketing and sales must meet, collaborate, and communicate regularly for successful alignment. Setting up these technologies makes things easier and promotes ideal alignment.
Execute Joint Campaigns
You’ve implemented all the systems required for optimal alignment. You have shared technologies, feedback, content strategies, and goals.
Now, you need action.
A joint campaign between sales and marketing turns your alignment efforts into reality. Joint campaigns rely on both sales and marketing, so they target audiences effectively. And they are more impactful.
Involve both teams early on as you develop a campaign. This gives each side an opportunity for adding their unique perspective. They already have a shared goal. They both know what the campaign must accomplish. This grants them insight into the type of copy necessary for client impact. Plus, the type of communication that is most effective for achieving revenue growth.
Having joint campaigns build trust between marketing and sales teams. At the same time, as a business-owner, you enjoy the results from impactful campaigns.
Establish Regular Communication
Aligning sales and marketing requires more than shared goals and defined roles. It also requires consistent communication. Both departments must communicate with one another regularly. This occurs with weekly, monthly, or bi-monthly meetings. Outside of those, use real-time communication tools that aid in routine contact.
This constant communication between marketing and sales promotes continued alignment. It promotes goal tracking between the teams. And helps them address any issues in goal progress quickly. This routine communication also aids in adjusting to changes that occur within your business or your marketplace. In essence, routine communication makes your sales and marketing teams more effective. This means more profit and professional success for you.
Staying Ahead of the Curve
Sales and marketing alignment places your business at the forefront of your competition.
Why?
Because optimal alignment grants you improved adaptability. In today’s marketplace, rapid change has become common. Society quickly moves from one interest to another. And companies must rapidly change and alter their operations to stay relevant. Having sales and marketing aligned ensures you are capable of rapid changes. It helps you remain relevant, even as the market changes.
Achieving alignment is only the first step, though. You must also be concerned with maintaining alignment once it’s established. As long as you pay attention to this, you will remain competitive – and relevant – for years to come.
Do you all have any other tips for aligning sales and marketing? Let me know in the comments!