V10.17: Sales And Marketing Are Inseparable

Every successful company has strong marketing and sales teams working together. There seems to be a stigma attached to the idea of the two teams always at odds, as if they are competing against each other. This is not the case. In fact, they are two halves of the same team. Companies with a strong sales and marketing teamwork actually get 20% more annual revenue growth.

The term Smarketing means alignment between sales and marketing. It is easy to work together if you align around the same goals and personas. Your goals are intertwined around each other. Both teams revolve around growth. Personas are so important! They are your ideal candidates to whom you are marketing and selling. It is essential that you communicate exactly who your personas are across all of the company. Communication is key in a happy and profitable union:

• Marketing must communicate what messaging works with the shared personas, what goals they have, and how you can help them.
• Sales teams have to communicate what people are saying on the phone, what’s resonating with them, and how you can use that to target and personalize them.

There are four simple steps to creating a strong and prosperous Smarketing team:

1. Implement a Service Level Agreement: A service level agreement (SLA) is what each team commits to accomplishing in order to support the other. Marketing is in charge of the number and quality of leads required to hit company revenue goals. Sales is in charge of the speed and depth of lead follow-up that makes economic sense.
2. Rely on Data: Data will provide you cold hard facts. You cannot argue with the data. You can use it to track patterns. Use dashboards in order to stay on track of both teams. It is a way to stay completely transparent on what is going on. Keep common reports and make them frequent and public. Sales dashboards should show the number of sales generated, sales activity, and depth of leads worked on and how many attempts were made. Marketing dashboards should show traffic and leads; it should track leads by source, leads by campaign, and qualified leads. There should also be a monthly report that encompasses all the data.
3. Set Up Closed-Loop Reporting: This is a full circle cycle; marketing passing to sales and then getting feedback. Marketing’s side of the cycle is learning the contact information and status updates. Sale’s side is to duplicate leads, import to CRM, and lead intelligence.
4. Maintain Open Communication: This last one is absolutely essentially. Start having weekly smarketing meetings where everyone attends. Talk about smarketing accomplishments, new product features, persona education, and metrics of goals. Also, start having monthly management meetings in which the sales and marketing managers get together. Don’t let your communication be simply emails and meetings. Sit together or near each other in order to allow for constant feedback between the two teams.

All in all, when combined, marketing and sales working together can create an unstoppable union.