In many businesses, marketing and sales functions are not very joined up. Sales and marketing teams typically work in silos. Marketing focuses on communication and supporting the buyer’s journey, while sales teams nurture leads and close the deals. Sales and marketing alignment refers to sales and marketing teams that share resources and adopt streamlined processes that focus on collaborative and shared goals.
Communication
Creating opportunities for knowledge sharing between sales and marketing teams will ensure greater cohesion in terms of strategic objectives and day to day operations. With proper communication and sharing of information between the marketing and sales teams, they can effectively generate and nurture valuable leads in a more joined up and efficient manner.
Sales funnel
Creating an effective marketing and sales funnel can help to foster collaboration and maximise opportunities. Marketing should own the top of the funnel – creating an overall marketing plan, building brand awareness and generating potential leads. The sales team can then take responsibility for the bottom of the funnel – executing tactical plans and following up on the potential leads in order to convert them into new or repeat customers.
As the sales team interacts with prospects and customers, they should share the insights they gain with the marketing team. This will help to refine and improve the marketing strategy over time. Scheduling regular meetings between the sales and marketing teams will also help to ensure regular communication on joint objectives.
Sales & marketing objectives
Once you have aligned your sales and marketing strategies, you should agree a set of metrics in order to track performance against your business objectives. As part of this, you should also align your reward and recognition policy so that you drive the right sales and marketing behaviours across both teams.
As you work towards achieving your sales and marketing objectives, you should ensure that any successes or key milestones are communicated across the business. This will motivate others and ensure that everyone across the organisation understands how they can get involved in sales and marketing initiatives.
Ensuring that your sales and marketing functions have a shared vision, shared objectives and an understanding of the KPIs needed to achieve those objectives will help to align these key functions and help to drive the overall success of your business.
How do you ensure collaboration between your sales and marketing teams? We’d love to hear your thoughts over on our LinkedIn page.
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