How to better connect sales and marketing management to impact the bottom line.
Sales and marketing management can be complex, often with marketing and sales teams becoming dissatisfied with each other. Why?
Many of the areas where the wedge between sales and marketing teams can come from is the feeling of each “owning” the customer, or the customer experience. Yet, no one department owns the customer. Marketing is there to identify who the best target audiences are and pursue them. Then your sales team begins the sales process with qualified prospects.
What are some of the areas of breakdown between sales vs. marketing?
Breakdown can happen when each feels as though they are responsible for the customer or for the sale. When sales and marketing teams are not aligned with overall objectives, goals for each other nor is there a leadership that realizes sales and marketing go hand in hand, this breakdown can happen.
Branding and messaging can become diluted, resulting in inconsistencies with the marketing messages, brand voice and tone that take so much time to develop.
Certainly the relationship with each other and how the disconnects impact customers, messaging, branding and bottom line.
What can your business do to connect marketing and sales teams for the benefit of the bottom line?
Sales and marketing management teams should agree on their goals together. Communication is a key element to effectively articulate goals for each of the teams and how they work together to reach specific prospects are and pursue them consistently.
Remember, marketing isn’t there to “steal” the sale; they are there to support the sales team. And sales people should be mindful of the brand, voice and tone that marketing works so diligently to craft and deliver consistently in the marketplace. Think about this in terms of your website – you market the website to improve search position so prospects find you, are engaged and then have the right conversion mechanisms to “close the sale” (i.e. generate the lead or purchase the product).
What’s been your experience with sales vs. marketing? Any ideas why there can often be a divide between the teams. Share your stories and experiences, please!
