Aligning Marketing and sales is all about the customer. Most organizations still believe that marketing and sales fits into two separated processes.
- Marketing generates leads for sales
- Sales qualifies these leads and turn them into opportunities.
In today’s digital landscape the customer calls the shots and the best companies are finding they’re better friends than salespeople to their customers. They’re having meaningful conversations on how an offering changed their business or how it streamlined a process. They’re having conversations on ways your business can help them solve a need.
The buyer has changed more in the past 10 years than the past 100 years. We are in a digital revolution; always on the go with access to unlimited information. Sales & Marketing must be integrated more now than ever before. Marketing needs to know what sales is doing and what the customer is saying. Sales needs to know how marketing is advertising and generating leads. Their goal is the same: increase revenue.
As technology and data keeps increasing, the customer becomes more and more the focal point of the conversation. Marketing and sales need to align with, for and around the customer to create a user experience that is seamless from start to finish.
Sounds good? So why the disconnect you ask?
Sales & Marketing Differences:
Marketers have long-term goals to nurture prospects into qualified leads. They establish strategic campaigns that focus on increasing brand recognition, and quantifying leads within a score. It would be awesome if everyone raised their hands and said “I want to buy your product”. As marketers, we know that’s a small percentage of the data base.
Sales Teams, we must think quick. With the competitive landscape increasing, we need to move faster, meet quotas, look for new opportunities and “Always be closing”. We need all information as fast as possible.
Sales says, “I need more leads.” Marketing says, “Sales ignores the qualified leads they send.” This back and forth leaves everyone with a bitter taste in their mouth and a siloed mindset.
Tear Down The Wall
Our goal is to bring down the wall separating marketing and sales. The future is no longer a funnel, but a cycle. and this era requires constant dialogue and exchange of information. When a sales representative gets a lead from marketing they’ll know it’s an opportunity because it has input provided by sales that helped market that lead.
We can help define the strategy and create ideal customer profiles that both teams can agree upon. We create scenarios and use our sensitivity analysis to establish a starting point of alignment or advance further into a true marketing & sales relationship.