Marketing and sales are vital and co-dependent sectors within companies. Therefore, it is essential to have marketing and sales integrated into your company, as the success of one strategy is – and always will be – linked to the other.
Having trained professionals (in all areas) and, more than that, being engaged and connected is undoubtedly a good practice within any business.
In short, having marketing and sales teams working together on their prospecting, qualifying, and selling strategies is the right way for companies to capture more customers, reduce the sales cycle and sell more and better.
Why Is It Essential To Have Marketing And Sales Working Together?
One starts the journey and “passes the baton” to the other to finish. One kicks off the business process with lead generation strategies, and the other qualifies and ensures opportunities are won.
This is the partnership that marketing and sales make and always need to make. And let it be apparent as soon as possible: the responsibility for selling more and better is shared by both teams.
Of course, the entire company is responsible for providing customer service that is always assertive and builds loyalty, but these two teams mentioned above play a particularly strategic role.
When we work together, generating an immediate positive impact becomes much more accessible.
Marketing attracts and nurtures leads. The goal is to make him mature, well educated. Afterward, this prospect is handed over to the pre-sales team so that they are responsible for qualifying them. Once this task is done, salespeople will have a lead that is much more prepared to make the purchase.
The critical thing in this whole process is the feedback that marketing and sales can give each other to improve prospecting strategies and the speech when selling.
Friction Is Standard… What Family Doesn’t Fight?
When results are less than desired, it is common for many fingers to be pointed in search of culprits. Marketing and sales must understand that they are a family, and… well… which one doesn’t have its frictions, right?
Sometimes misalignment is joint, and criticism comes from all sides.
Sales might say, about marketing, that they were handed bad, poorly nurtured leads – which lengthens the sales cycle – and therefore, the deals weren’t sealed. Or that there are few leads generated, which leaves many sellers both idle and eager to take advantage of the few opportunities they have.
Four Tips For Integrating Marketing And Sales Teams In Companies
For the scenario mentioned above to be possible, it is necessary to promote some actions aimed at integration and a feeling of union between marketing and sales.
Below, we separate four tips on how to do this in companies. Managers need to carry out these actions in an organized and disciplined manner.
It is also necessary to carry out a fair performance assessment, individually and collectively, throughout the process to avoid gaps and keep everyone’s motivation high.
Shall we check?
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1 – Set Shared Goals
Having a standard, the shared goal is the first step for marketing and sales to start working together, complementing each other’s work.
However, calm down.
However, before setting numbers, call the teams to talk. This needs to be a joint construction with goals that make sense and can be achieved.
Map out the most relevant marketing strategies and most successful prospecting channels. Also, align expectations about inbound marketing and the reference image that the company constantly needs to convey, especially the buyer persona.
Paying attention to this point is essential, as confidence must be passed on to people from the first moment. Because when that happens, the sales team has much less work to qualify the lead.
2 – Invest In Training
Qualification is critical for anyone at any time. This is undeniably true when we talk about a company’s processes.
Constant training is a must – and this cannot be ignored. Mainly because, for the goals to be achieved, it is necessary to create conditions for this.
In this sense, promoting joint meetings, which are frequent and discuss the process, is a good way of working and of making clear the need for cooperation between sectors. More than that, show, didactically, in practice, the unfolding that each stage of the process has.
Therefore, the intention is to stimulate the feeling of cooperation. Show that if something does not go as desired, it will be reflected throughout the team. That is, seeing the most favorable results will not be possible.
3 – Having Technology As An Ally
In addition to training, giving marketing and sales teams the right conditions is using technology. Yes, digital transformation is a powerful and indispensable ally. Thus. Companies must pay attention to them to stand out from the competition.
So, for the marketing team, invest in automation software that allows email marketing campaigns, capturing and nurturing leads, creating landing pages for your rich materials, and managing social networks, among others.
However, using a CRM system is essential for the commercial team to ensure productivity. At each sales funnel stage, the prospect receives all the attention and value he needs to buy effectively.
4 – Always Share The Information
Another way to always have an assertive process is by having control of it. Having power, you have management. And that only happens when you have the right metrics and the sharing of numbers that are relevant to the business.
Customer portfolio, conversion rate at each stage of the funnel, opportunities opened, won and lost email opening rate, and more.
All this, referring to sales or marketing actions, must be open to everyone. Because it’s a collective construction, remember?
So create visual dashboards so that, in real-time, you can see what’s going well and what still isn’t. Work assertively and quickly on corrections.
