by Steve Olenski
Republished from Forbes, December 20, 2017
Sales and marketing often work separately for many reasons. They don’t understand each other, which creates conflict about what really delivers revenue for the company. There are also many rumblings among the sales team members about a lack of real support by marketing. Even leadership has a tendency to put both in silos to maintain the distance.’
In reality, sales and marketing could accomplish so much together if they could get along. If you are looking for ways to enable sales and marketing to collaborate, consider these five opportunities in 2018 and beyond:
1. Buyer Personas
Being on the front lines means that the sales team knows what each customer segment looks like. Also, this includes what they want, their shopping behaviors, and purchase patterns. They see these actions first-hand plus get feedback and information on the issues these potential customers are experiencing.
However, marketing also tends to do considerable research, using other sources, to paint a similar picture. For example, marketing can look at the bigger picture. This includes external factors that influence how people buy. Also, they can determine what motivates them to choose one brand over another.
Rather than one department being more accurate than the other and proving that point, the better approach is to compare notes. Together, they can create a precise description of the buyer personas. These descriptions generate personalized content and service delivery.
2. Timing
It’s not always the messaging that counts. Often, it is about the timing of that messaging. Again, sales can let marketing know when this timing is optimal. When marketing gets the campaigns out just when the audience is looking for this information, it makes the sales team’s job so much easier. Without the intelligence from sales, however, marketing wouldn’t know when to do this. Again, this is why tight collaboration is so important to sales and marketing.
The feedback that the sales team receives concerning the emails and other content marketing has put out is beneficial information that helps shape what marketing does in the future to appeal to the leads sales receive. Also, sharing the marketing strategy schedule with sales helps them know the best time to follow-up with these prospects to ensure they received the messaging.
3. Content Development
The sales team rarely has the time to create the type of collateral or content it needs to make an effective, compelling sale. When they do try to create the necessary material, it takes longer than anticipated and eats into the time they could have been doing other sales-related activities. This is where marketing can play an effective role in working with sales to produce content for proposals and other sales collateral.
During content development, marketing and sales decide on the themes, messaging, and personalized content. Based on the experience of sales working with prospects, the team can recommend the key friction points as well as critical issues on this audience’s minds. Also, the sales team may have better insights into how to personalize the content based on previous conversations with these prospects.
In this way, sales reps have the content they need while marketing has a better picture of how to craft their content going forward to further hone the traffic that comes to the sales team in the form of leads.
4. Proposals and Agreements
In providing the right level of support, James Kappen, CEO and Founder of Proposable, a company that providers proposal software for more effective documents, noted:
“Marketing can go a long way to taking some of the tedious work off the shoulders of the sales team. This includes generating branded proposals with consistent formats and messaging based on the insights the sales team shares with them. That way, marketing can use its expertise in branding, corporate identity, and value-focused content to deliver a more compelling proposal to the sales team to use. The shared information and understanding of the potential buyer elevate the relevancy and engagement that the proposal can offer, enabling more conversions.”
Likewise, other tools like Eversign provide the collaborative platform marketing and sales need to work together effectively. The result is that documents can be created, revised, signed and share between those within the company and the prospect. Other apps commonly used by both marketing and sales can be integrated with this platform. The result is improved efficiency and communication as well as fewer tasks for both departments. It allows for a paperless environment that also reduces the costs for both departments, freeing up more resources to focus on the critical work necessary to generate and convert leads.
5. Analysis
Just as the construction of buyer personas started the collaborative process between marketing and sales, the end of the sales cycle can also produce the same collaborative benefits. What happens when sales and marketing work together is the process of attracting and acquiring customers blurs. This makes it difficult to assess what specific role each played when the data is analyzed later on.
This is when it is beneficial to conduct the analysis together. Everyone can see how they are contributing to the whole process and generate the necessary return. While both departments can assess various campaigns or other data separately, it only serves to keep sales and marketing apart when they are better served looking at the lead generation data as a larger team.
For example, the benefits are clear when the numbers show where visitors were visiting on a website and how engaged they are with social media. Knowing this information can then be a basis for comparing how sales did on the follow-up in regards to pushing the lead farther down the sales funnel and toward a conversion. After all, it is the actions of both groups that create the conversion, so it makes sense to put all the analytics together and trace the leads journey from prospect to customer.
Collaboration At Its Very Best
By working together on these types of tasks, marketing and sales can develop new synergies that save time and money. Plus, a higher level of insight is formed by the ability to share information on trends, behaviors, and results. Rather than conflict, the greater collaborative environment yields more leads and conversions. It’s a win-win for the departments and an even greater win for the company.