How to Align Your Sales and Marketing Teams
Do you have a sales and marketing team, but feel like they work in contrast with each other? The key to getting the most out of your sales and marketing teams is to ensure they work in conjunction with one another. After all, their methods may look different, but the end goal remains the same—to grow the business.
Sales vs. Marketing
Before we dive in, we need to define the difference between sales and marketing. In simple terms, sales is when a prospect is taken through the sales process to—hopefully—become a customer or client. Sales teams help guide the prospect through the sales process. Marketing is the process of creating interest and leads for your products or services. Marketers develop ideas and strategies to promote your business and its brand.
How Sales and Marketing Work Together
Marketing supplies the leads to enter the sales process. In other words, the sales process is the machine that churns the lead from a prospect to a client. Marketing brings the leads into the machine.
From a sales perspective, the sales team needs the marketing team to bring in qualified leads so they can focus on the sales process. Otherwise, your sales professionals are going to spend more time prospecting and less time growing the business.
From a marketing perspective, the marketing team needs sales professionals to bring the leads into the sales process. Otherwise, all of their hard work will be done for nothing! If the sales team does not do anything with the leads provided, you may enter the dangerous territory of seeing the marketing team as more of a business expense, rather than a business investment. Remember, your marketing team is not responsible for closing business.
Marketing is also intertwined with sales because it acts as a confirmation for your prospects. Your brand and its messaging should back up and support your sales process. For example, when your sales professionals are trying to sell a product or service, you want your website and content to match the private conversations they are having with a prospect. Everything from your case studies, to your testimonials and what you post on LinkedIn, should align with your business and its brand. The last thing you want is for your prospect to hear one thing in person and read something completely different online.
How to Align Your Sales and Marketing Teams
Here’s the secret sauce—branding. To truly align your sales and marketing teams, you need a strong brand. Meaning, your messaging needs to be so crystal clear that everyone from your top executives to your administrative staff knows who they are working for and what they are selling.
If you are unsure about your brand, schedule a meeting to reflect and brainstorm with your team. Figure out what is the true essence of your business, the why behind what you do, and what makes you different from your competitors.
Once you get clarity on your brand, take the time to write it out. What is your brand statement? Your vision? Your positioning statement? What is your unique selling proposition? Who are your ideal clients? You should have answers to all of these questions before moving on.
Next, share your brand messaging with everyone in your business. Not only will this help create clarity and consistency amongst your team, but it will also help give purpose to their work. When everyone is aware of the brand messaging, they can organize their teams around it. The sales process should incorporate the messaging, just as the marketing strategies should.
Finally, it’s time to execute. Long gone are the days of separate and siloed departments. Your sales and marketing teams should collaborate. At the very least, they should communicate what they are working on and why through regularly scheduled meetings.
With an open dialogue, your sales and marketing teams will be better equipped to support each other. They can align their strategies and pivot when necessary. In the end, your business will bring in more qualified leads and close on more business.
If you have questions about how to align your sales and marketing teams, call Sebastian Lane Consulting at 443-534-6783 or email us at jesse@sebastianlaneconsulting.com. For ¼ of the cost of an in-house sales manager, we create a proven & repeatable sales process that is tailored to the core values of your organization.