In a business, marketing and sales are equally important departments, both with distinct roles to play. Both departments have the same ultimate goal: revenue generation and growth. However, marketing and sales often do not allocate an appropriate amount of time aligning their goals. Marketing teams might be measuring success based on the volume of leads that have been generated, whilst sales may be less worried about the volume of leads and more worried on the quality of leads.
This misalignment of targets can often cause companies to fall short of their revenue targets. This has caused many organisations to make great progress in alignment marketing and sales teams (often referred to as revenue teams) Through tying sales and marketing together, organisations ensure the bottom line is kept top of mind. Here’s why aligning marketing and sales drives better results.
You’ll get a better understanding of your customer
One of the biggest benefits of sales and marketing teams working together is that it helps to get a better understanding of their audience. The sales team directly communicates with the customer up until the end of their buying journey. This means the sales teams’ feedback can give you better insight into why the customer chose you over your competitors, the reasons for making a purchase and traits you should look for in a prospect
This will help your marketing team build a more comprehensive and in-depth buyer persona and better targeted messaging for future marketing strategies. Sales representatives also see benefits from getting support from marketing. If the marketing team identifies a lead that is ready to purchase, they should notify the sales team in order to close the deal quickly otherwise the sales team might end up following a slower timeline in which the customer could lose interest.
You’ll understand why the customer engaged
The sales team gathers a lot of knowledge by engaging with prospects daily. Sales is an invaluable resource for the marketing team as they are likely to understand the customer in a unique way to other departments.
Information such as the type of content that caught the buyers attention, the channel which they discovered your organisation and the features they were unaware of is information the sales staff can pass on to marketing.
You’ll ensure a better customer experience
Inconsistent communication between marketing and sales can lead to duplicated tasks and wasted time. A survey by LinkedIn highlighted that 58% of organisations that have integrated sales and marketing see improved efficiency and 52% see increased productivity. In the same study, 71% of respondents believed they better addressed the needs of their customers because of this collaboration.
As collaborative efforts between the two departments increase, both sales and marketing have deeper insights into the challenges the other faces, which leads to a reduction in the likelihood of duplicate work as well as other misunderstandings.
How can sales and marketing work together?
Your marketing and sales team is able to get real-time insights into your leads through working from data housed in a single centralised system —- like the Pype® CRM
By using a customer relationship management software (CRM), the marketing department will get a more comprehensive understanding of the lead progress, the customer’s preferred time for contact and previous purchase behaviours. As well as this, by integrating a marketing automation tool with your CRM, means that the sales team can gain access to insightful information such as how a campaign is performing. Lastly, all of the information being in one centralised location allows for seamless lead handover, as the CRM can instantly notify sales when a lead should be moved to the next stage.
For both small businesses and large organisations, aligning your sales and marketing teams is crucial to gain maximum benefits and improve your company’s efficiency.
