Are your events and sales teams on the same page?
You'd be forgiven for thinking that, having the common aim of doing well for your business, events and sales would be easy bedfellows.
In actual fact, clashes in communication or competition for funds can leave events and sales teams at loggerheads. It's in the best interests of your business to get them on the same page.
Why is it so important that they get along and what can you do to facilitate that?
Sales and Events Can Be a Dream Team
If you can get your sales and events teams working together, you can use the strengths of both in conjunction to benefit your business.
Your events team will be much more focused on marketing, while your sales team will be focused on driving purchases from qualified leads. Working together, they can attract more of the best customers to your business, and close more deals.
For example, the article "Why Events and Sales Teams Should Work Together" points out that meeting planners need to understand the priorities goals and needs of their attendees. This is information that salespeople know intimately.
So, if you're putting together an event for your business, the team planning the event will benefit a lot from getting your sales team on board.
Both teams bring unique insights into your business and your customers, when added together can make for more effective promotion and more sales than ever.
It's clear that your sales and events teams have an important job in terms of working together to promote your brand, so what can you do to help them along?
Sit Down Together
Often your sales and events teams won't truly understand what the other brings to the table. This can cause discord.
To remedy this, get your sales and events teams to sit down together for an honest discussion of what each team does, and what it needs to be the best at that.
Help your sales and events teams to see how they both fit into the overall aims of your business, and why their roles are so vital.
Understanding both where they fit, and where the other fits, will help build harmony.
In particular, encourage discussion that covers:
- What each team can offer that will help the other in their goals;
- What each team can do to better support the other while working together.
Open communication will foster understanding between your sales and events teams
Define Goals and Roles
Whether you're planning a weekend business event, a networking meeting, or a marketing campaign, it's important that your sales and events teams have clearly defined roles within the parameters of that event.
Each team should know what exactly they're responsible for, so they can work together without the risk of ending up carrying the can for each other.
Working together to define goals is also important.
As well as the overall goal of any event, what are the specific goals for each team and how can they work in harmony to achieve those?
Say for example you're running a promotional event. Your events team will be focused on bringing people to that event, while your sales team will focus on closing deals on the day.
By working together your sales team can provide information on the ideal attendees, so your events team can reach out to them.
Sales and events don't have to represent disparate teams within your organization.
By fostering understanding between them and making the most of the strengths of both, you can get sales and marketing working together for the common good of your business.