If you still see your marketing and sales teams as two completely separate entities, you’re making a huge mistake. Collaboration between the sales and marketing departments is extremely important. In 2020, companies were two times more likely to experience a revenue decline of over 20% compared to the previous year if their sales and marketing teams weren’t aligned.
Sales and marketing might seem like they have different objectives, but, ultimately, they have the same goal, and that is to boost revenue. In order to achieve that, they must be aligned.
Without marketing, sales reps would struggle to get leads, and marketers wouldn’t be able to close deals without a sales team. That’s exactly why they must have a common strategy and work towards achieving the same goals.
However, even though everyone seems to be aware of the importance of aligning marketing and sales teams, these departments often work completely independently.
Here are six ways you can avoid this and bridge the gap between the marketing and sales teams.
Set Common Goals and Targets
If you want to ensure that your marketing and sales teams are on the same page, it’s necessary to set common goals for these two departments. Once your sales and marketing teams have aligned goals and follow the same KPIs, they will become much more cooperative and efficient.
Marketing and sales teams should develop shared revenue goals (that can be set quarterly) generate a list of customer personas and target accounts, and work together on customer retention and engagement.
With the combined forces of these two departments, your company will be able to reach not only your financial goals but also boost customer engagement and satisfaction by creating more informed customer personas and understanding their particular needs.
Encourage communication between departments
Collaboration between sales and marketing teams is impossible without communication. Internal communication can be challenging even when your teams are in the same locations, but nowadays, many teams operate remotely, facing even bigger communication and collaboration challenges.
To bridge the gap between sales and marketing, you can implement communication and collaboration tools to streamline intra-departmental communication.
With a majority of employees working remotely, both formal and informal virtual communication is essential in order to make your employees feel like a part of a team. Leverage team collaboration tools such as Asana or Slack, you will enable your team members to work on complex issues together and develop functional relationships among themselves.
Hold joint meetings
To further improve interdepartmental communication, consider holding occasional joint meetings with both sales and marketing teams.
This can be achieved much easier in smaller companies with smaller teams, but you can still accomplish it even if you have multiple large teams by including management or representatives of each team.
Another way to keep everyone in the loop is by organizing monthly or quarterly webinars and conference calls.
Automate as much as possible
Keeping everyone updated manually can be time-consuming and things can easily slip through the cracks. That’s why you should automate menial tasks as much as possible and allow your marketing and sales teams to focus on generating leads and closing deals.
With the right sales engagement platform, everyone can easily access a shared database and track the entire sales process.
From automated email campaigns to lead tracking, both your sales and marketing teams will have access to a shared database and work together on generating more leads, boosting engagement, and converting them faster.
Record sales calls for the marketing team
Your marketing department should have insight into the sales calls. This can help them gain a better understanding of what issues prospects are having, making it easier to create more accurate buyer personas and tailor marketing campaigns to solve their specific pain points.
The marketing department should pay special attention to demo calls and qualifying calls because that’s when leads are most likely to talk about their issues and what features they’re looking for to solve them.
These are all great insights that can help create more tailored marketing campaigns.
Create an open-door policy
It’s not a good sign if your employees are hesitant to share their opinions and concerns, no matter which department they belong to.
You have to promote an open-door policy and encourage your employees to communicate with each other and with management, discuss issues, provide feedback, and pitch their ideas.
Only if you create a culture of open discussion will your sales and marketing department be able to efficiently and comfortably communicate and work on achieving the same goals.
Over to you
If your sales and marketing teams are not working in perfect harmony, don’t be discouraged. This is perfectly normal, but it doesn't mean you shouldn’t do anything about it.
Start by acknowledging the issue and trying to resolve any obvious issues that might be causing the disconnection between departments. Reach out to both departments and try to understand their specific needs, so they can work together on figuring out how to solve your customer’s problems.
Not only will bridging the gap between sales and marketing help you increase revenue, but it will also allow you to create a healthier work environment and foster a culture of open communication and collaboration.