In a small company, it’s easy to put a Smarketing strategy in place (aligning Marketing and Sales), because the same people often wear both hats. But as soon as the company grows, the teams aren’t always on the same wavelength, and in the most extreme cases they can even be in conflict.
Each has its own metrics and its own way of seeing things… and yet their goal is the same: generate more leads and, ultimately, more sales! So how do you align your sales and marketing teams? Here are a few Smarketing best practices to adopt so you can grow your revenue by working together effectively.
Hold regular meetings between the teams
If you want to move towards shared goals, it’s essential to share your processes, resources and best practices from the outset. Set up meetings every week or fortnight and keep a close eye on the metrics for lead generation, calls made, emails sent, appointments booked… and of course the conversion of prospects into clients.
Ideally, the Marketing people should make themselves available at any time for urgent advice. And the other way round, listening in on the sales reps’ calls can help Marketing come up with new ideas for content, targeting or products.
Don’t forget informal events (leaving drinks, trade shows) to really swap best practices and off-the-record information.
Share the content-creation and targeting process
It’s very important for Marketing teams to get regular feedback from the sales reps: they’re the ones in direct contact with the customer, the ones who gather criticism and suggestions. Ideal material for coming up with new content ideas! For example, if users don’t understand a new product well, Marketing can create an infographic or a video tutorial to make it easier to get started.
Likewise, the Sales teams will provide very relevant information and tips for fine-tuning your targeting. Use shared documents (Google Drive, Trello for project management) to jot down your ideas and divide up the work.
Keep teams informed of news and events, and get everyone involved
A simple tip: create an email alias so that all the marketing and sales teams receive the same information at the same time.
Use a shared calendar to flag upcoming promotions, webinars, product launches and so on. Be sure to include any URLs (event registration, landing page) and a detailed description of the operation. You’ll no longer be able to say you didn’t know…
Marketing teams can write a blog post under the name of one of the sales reps: just interview them and then write up what they say. That lets the rep send the article to their prospects to build rapport and credibility with them.
Centralise resources and build on a shared tool
Marketing teams produce statistics and studies that are very useful for your sales pitch: from infographics to case studies, you can reuse this content to convince your prospects of the value of working with you.
Tools like Mixdata let:
> Marketing teams source highly targeted leads that export automatically to the CRM or marketing automation tool, and benefit from instant market studies and firmographics to generate quality content and better understand the commercial environment.
> Sales teams benefit from in-depth prospect knowledge, an alerting system to react quickly to business signals, and the ability to follow their targeting hunches as they go, all within a structured space.
To align sales activity with Marketing, why not start by equipping them with one and the same tool?
