In a well-oiled business organization, the alignment of marketing and sales teams is one of the key factors of success. It’s shown that, when these two teams align, businesses’ customer retention rate gets a 36% boost, while their sales close rate jumps by 38%.
In a lot of organizations, however, marketing and sales teams have trouble getting along. It’s a well-known fact among professionals from both fields that making a marketing team and a sales team align is difficult. But achieving proper alignment creates great results. Businesses should, therefore, find ways to improve the cooperation between the two teams. Here are a couple of ideas worth a try.
Build a Common Ground Around Metrics
The success of marketing campaigns, especially digital ones, depends to a large extent on marketers’ ability to measure important parameters. These parameters can be related to the target audience or the audience’s interaction with the marketing materials. The cost-effectiveness of marketing activities is also something worth measuring.
Sales teams will also rely on metrics for insights and analysis. And there are lots of metrics that are important for both teams. Length of the buying cycle is one of those metrics. So is MQL to SQL ratio. These metrics can help business owners determine how well their teams are working together. But they can also form a common ground where the teams have to get together if they want to achieve better individual results.
Ensure Consistent Use of Technology
One of the things marketing teams often complain about when it comes to their counterparts in sales is the inconsistent use of tech. It’s funny because salespeople, marketers, and anyone who understands brands and branding know that consistency is one of the key traits of the promotional side of the business. Consistency is also an important component of good cooperation because it minimizes uncertainty.
Business owners can declare the use of tech solutions as mandatory. However, it’s also important to find the right solution that will be easy for both teams to use. CRM tools for small and medium businesses, such as Sage CRM, are more than capable of serving as a shared solution that benefits marketers and salespeople. If the sales team has trouble using the tool, spending some time and maybe money to train them might be a good investment.
Improve Communication
Marketers and salespeople should be communication specialists. A bulk of their job consists of using different communication methods to benefit their business. However, when it comes to communicating with each other, both teams often fall short.
Developing communication procedures can help repair some of the communication issues. Teams should know what they have to report to each other. They also need to have a limited choice of communication tools, so to avoid scattered communication. In some cases, bringing in outside help to show the teams the basics of effective communication might be necessary. Communication is one of the crucial areas for improvement, so anything businesses can do to improve it should pay itself off.
Work on Tasks Together
In very small businesses, a single person often handles both marketing and sales. One of the reasons this is possible, even though it’s not always recommended, is the overlap of marketing and sales activities. Developing a customer persona is an activity that’s important for marketing and sales alike. Creating content is something both teams need to do, especially in a digital environment.
It makes sense to mandate that marketers and salespeople work together on tasks that are critical for both. The results should be acceptable to both teams and reduce the possibility of friction between the teams later. Sharing the responsibility for these important tasks will make it much harder for the teams to shift blame on one another if something goes wrong.
Put Them in Each Other’s Shoes
When building a business culture that includes collaboration as a key value, one of the things businesses can do is to have marketers sit in on sales calls. Conversely, salespeople can observe the daily working of marketers.
It’s possible that members of one team don’t know exactly what the members of the other team have to deal with. Businesses that want the two teams to collaborate better should give the team members a chance to learn what the other team is doing. It can foster understanding, spark creative criticism, and help the teams streamline their processes to the benefit of everyone involved.
Ensuring proper alignment of marketing and sales teams is a business-critical activity. The businesses that don’t manage to do it might not go under because of it, but they will miss many opportunities to improve their bottom line. In some cases, it’s possible to help the two teams work together better without a significant investment. When an investment is called for, however, businesses should consider it seriously, because great things happen when marketing and sales work as a well-oiled machine.