Why is it important to align your sales and marketing teams? To make the most of both departments. To eliminate the inherent tension between the two departments. To increase top-line revenue. That’s right, aligning your sales and marketing teams can increase your company’s revenue. A study by Aberdeen Research in 2010 found that companies with a strong sales and marketing alignment experienced an average of 20% growth in annual revenue.
So, how do you align your sales and marketing departments to start seeing this increase in revenue? Try these couple of tips from marketing consultants to get you started:
Get on the Same Page
A primary reason for decreased efficiency is the fact that there is a disconnect between the two departments somewhere. Find that disconnect and work to fix it.
A study by the CMO Council, the Wall Street Journal and Oracle found that “salespeople are spending approximately 40% of their time preparing customer-facing deliverables” while “leveraging less than 50% of the materials created by marketing”. This is a problem that is creating inefficiency for both departments. Marketing or marketing consultants spend time creating materials that sales doesn’t use. Meanwhile, sales is spending their time creating materials when they should be leveraging the help of marketing to spend more time on closing customers. What’s more, only 10-12% of the deliverables created by sales are both compelling to the customer and consistent with the corporate messaging.
First step to aligning the two departments: get on the same page. Make sure that each department fully understands the functions, responsibilities, processes and the goals of the other. Make sure that messaging is consistent from marketing to sales so that you don’t confuse your customers.
Think of the Customer
Marketing and sales share a root motivation: reach the customer. Both departments need to be fully aware of the company’s buyer persona and how to speak to resonate with this ideal customer. The disconnect and tension between sales and marketing is not only going to hurt the company but also the customer. When you get into a situation where your marketing and sales departments are putting out different messages or backpedaling with the same customer, the interactions become unproductive which leaves a negative feeling in the customer’s mind.
In addition, the customer buying process is ever changing. Today customers are largely capable of getting a majority of the way through the buying cycle before ever contacting the company. For this reason, it is more important than ever for sales and marketing to be on the same page. With the same goals and messaging, sales and marketing can work together to successfully nurture that customer through the purchase cycle to increase revenues for their company. Marketing feeds them the messages before they make contact with the company and sales takes it from there to close the customer.
Communicate!
We marketing consultants have heard the sales and marketing relationship referred to as “The Tale of Two Cities” or “Sales is from Mars, Marketing is from Venus”. Clever, yes. Accurate, no. They are working towards the same goal for the same company; they should be in constant two-way communication. Keeping the two departments in close contact will allow them to evolve and learn with one another. What messaging resonates? What channels hit your buyer persona best? When’s the best time for outreach? What convinces them to call? What convinces them to buy? These are things that sales and marketing should both know so that they can be nimble and proactive together.
This is also important to make the most out of prospective client interactions. If the two departments aren’t in communication, how will sales know where marketing left off and how will marketing know if their tactics were effective to help close a customer?
Bottom Line
It doesn’t need to be a battle between sales and marketing in your organization. They are both vital to the success and growth of a company but if they don’t work together, they can hinder the company’s progress.
