A long-standing and unfortunately common “rival” for many businesses is sales teams vs. marketing teams. Oftentimes this rival comes about because both teams aren’t aligned and don’t fully understand the other’s part in the process. Without marketing, sales teams can waste time gathering unqualified and non nurtured leads. Without sales, marketing teams would have difficulty understanding what prospects want and struggle to convert. Both teams suffer and miss out on opportunities. Ultimately, one without the other just won’t work.
When both teams come together and align on terms, roles, goals and processes, businesses can drive new growth by 35%!
In our recent post, we talked about the different areas where marketing and sales teams should align to ensure company success. In this blog post, we’ll discuss the different methods that marketing and sales teams can follow to ensure that there is always clear and open communication between both teams.
How to Align Marketing and Sales
This critical connection between marketing and sales can be solidified by adopting these 5 easy methods for business alignment:
1. Utilize lead scoring
Lead scoring is a process that defines and qualifies your leads by assigning numerical points, positive and negative, based on the different engagements your contacts can have with your business. Based on the lead score range determined for each stage, your teams can quickly define where a contact falls within the buyer’s journey. Both teams should understand the stages within the sales funnel as well as their respective responsibilities within each stage so that the transition from one team to another is clear and smooth.
You can also set up automated notifications to the respective teams when a lead has moved from one stage to another so they know it’s their turn to follow-up. This provides clear communication from one team to the next.
- Ex: Someone who fills out a form to download a resource receives +50 points.
- Ex: Someone who opts out of your emails receives -50 points.
- Ex: Your MQLs are defined by having a lead score of 80-200 points.
- Ex: A contact has 200+ points and has been transitioned to an SQL, therefore notifying the sales team to follow-up with a call.
While each business has different models for how they assign points, it’s important that your marketing and sales teams agree on how the points are assigned by reviewing historical data to decide what engagements have led to quality leads.
2. Host weekly meetings
33.3% of sales and marketing teams do not regularly meet. Hold weekly meetings with clear agendas so your marketing and sales teams stay connected and establish good working relationships.
Use this time to review the current leads funnel, brainstorm ideas of how to streamline the process, share feedback and ask questions.
- Ex: What can the marketing team do to help the sales team become more efficient?
- Ex: What new resources can the sales team use to nurture leads?
- Ex: Has the sales team followed up with this new lead? How did it go?
Ongoing communication and weekly check-ins will ensure each team is always in sync and working together to reach the end goal.
3. Communication and collaboration channels
Use platforms like Slack or Teams to create an open line of communication and collaboration between teams.
While 68% of marketers believe sales teams aren’t taking advantage of the content created, only 35% of sales reps believe marketing is creating valuable content for them to use. Use this space to collaborate and discuss different content ideas.
Having a place for both teams to easily communicate will allow your teams to feel as though they’re working together as one team for the betterment of the business, instead of two separate teams with different goals.
4. Discuss new campaigns and resources with the sales team
Marketers should discuss new promotions and offers with the sales team to ensure they’re aware of how new leads are coming in and how to best communicate with them. The marketing team should explain the campaigns and include talking points and ideas for how the sales team should follow-up.
Sales reps should also be alerted when new content is created so they know what new resources to share with potential customers. And on the other hand, the sales team should also discuss with the marketing team what resources they feel will be useful based on conversations they’ve had with prospects.
5. Review metrics together
It’s important that both teams have access to the same metrics. Create a joint dashboard in your CRM and/or Google Analytics that pulls both marketing and sales metrics so both teams can have full visibility of what’s working and what’s not working throughout the buyer’s journey. Review these dashboards together monthly to make suggestions of improvements with campaigns.
Because the two teams may have different perspectives, brainstorming together to come up with ideas not only displays understanding of each team’s role in reaching the end goal but also produces a comprehensive campaign from top to bottom.
Next Steps
By using the methods above, marketing and sales can begin to realize the impact each team has on each other and on the business as a whole. It may take some time to leave the rivalries behind, but by meeting regularly and having open communication eventually your teams will learn to work in sync for the betterment of the business.
Contact Maybank Advisors today for a quick consultation to discover how we can implement processes and tools to improve your marketing and sales alignment to help accelerate your business revenue generation. Or download our free resource, “Digital Strategies to Accelerate Sales and Revenue Growth in 2021,” for some tips on how to get started.
