Sales and Marketing alignment is to work on single goal, reduce cost & align marketing and sales process to produce better business results. Aligned marketing and sales makes process more effective remove the gaps between both the teams. Initially in business marketing and sales are different departments. Both have their own responsibilities and work procedure. Lets see the difference between both department
Whats the difference between Sales and Marketing?
Defining Sales and Marketing
What is Marketing?
Marketing works for the promotion of products, services or businesses on different platforms.
What is Sales?
Sales team is to help buyer to complete purchasing process or sell those products to buyers.
Although both have their own work area but their joint effects can be beneficial for their progress and business success for that matter experts emphasis on SMarketing.
Stats For Sales and Marketing Alignment Benefits
According to the Stats
- 200% increase in revenue with Sales and Marketing Alignment
- Bring 36% more customer retention
- Get 38% more sales win ratio
- Save Time because 50% marketing leads not useful for sales due to sales & marketing misalignment
Now the Question is How to align these departments and make them productive for business. Here are the points to be focused
Communication
First and foremost step for the collaboration of Sales and Marketing department is communication. To interact with each other or deliver messages between sales and marketing department a better communication path is required. Where both departments can share their information, convey messages. Communication path can help business on different ways
- Resolve issues between Sales and Marketing Department
- Create Experience or Knowledge Sharing Environment
- Improve Business Productivity
- Better Combined Strategy Building
- Team alignment training and Courses
To make your communication path or process more effective consider following tips or techniques
a. Clear Messaging
Keep your conversation simple and easy. Secondly deliver information to the point to get better results. Irrelevant conversion or Complicated transfer of information can cause communication failure. For better communication deliver or convey a clear message. Understand what the opponent wants from you? Or What information you are going to deliver him?
b. Common term
Use of common terms is necessary for better communication between both sales and marketing teams. Sometimes words or terminologies have multiple meanings or different words can be used for almost same meanings. Be sure that the terminology used by the teams should have common meanings or purpose defined to better understand the message. In other words set common definitions for the terms being used in process
c. Meet Regularly
Sales and Marketing collaboration is a joint effort from start to end for the success of business. To get the best strategies and outputs both teams should meet regularly and communicate with each other. Share their experiences or knowledge on the present strategy and set future plans. So meet regularly on weekly or monthly basis as per requirement.
Align Goals
Goal Align can improve the productivity of the business and boost sales by converting leads into potential customers. Sales and Marketing teams have their own goals. Plan strategies according to their goals. Marketing goals are to create brand awareness, generate web traffic by using search results, social media, paid ads and create relevant content. So that they can generate more leads to show performance. Whereas Sales team focus on generating sales with leads or traffic generated by marketing team. But if both consider the issues and requirements of one an other and align the goal strategy its more fruitful for business success. For that matter they have to plan a combined strategy for the goals that focus sales and marketing requirement. Here are the things to be focused while creating an aligned sales and marketing goals
a. Sales Qualified Leads
Initially Marketing team generate all the leads with their marketing or promotion techniques. They focus on the number of leads generated through their marketing efforts. Whereas sales marketing focus those leads that can be converted into customer are complete the purchase process. So both teams have to focus on Sales Qualified Leads.
b. Increase Sales
Marketing and Sales Teams Should focus more to generate sales. Rather then just sending information based material. Try to push leads to buy something or complete the purchase. Because the ultimate goal of every business is sales generation.
c. Increase Retention
Customer retention should be considered while planning strategy for business. Try to retain loyal customer provide best offers and quality to satisfy customers. Because it benefits business for long time. Not focus only one time sales. Build relation with customers by sending attractive and related stuff. Encourage their attachment with your business or products
d. Replace Sales Funnel with revenue funnel
In traditional sales funnel, marketing department create awareness and interest. Whereas Sales team move audience to next level with consideration, evaluation and then purchase. They Work in individual capacity. But in revenue cycle of funnel both work in collaboration and help or guide each other in targeting audience till purchase completion. In their combined effort they look for
- Target Available Market
- Website Visits
- New Contacts
- Marketing Qualified Leads
- Sales Qualified Leads
- Sales Opportunity
- Proposal Submitted
- New Customers
Align Roles
Sales and Marketing are separate departments in every business. That works for business success by generating sales and bringing new customers. Although they are interconnected and their combination enhance business performance but still they have their own role and responsibilities with in the business. So lets determine their roles in business success.
a. Marketing Roles
Marketing Department or team work on the promotion of business. Where they start from creating brand awareness. Educating them about the products. Understanding customer problems and needs. Presenting solution for the customers needs. Using different platform to promote business products by creating content, posting on social media, putting paid ads, pushing audience towards landing pages to generate leads.
b. Sales Roles
Role of Sales department is to generate sales with leads collected by the marketing team. Sales put there efforts to convert leads to sales. For that they interact or communicate with customers or leads to push them towards purchase by facilitating them or offering discounts, coupons or other stuff like that. Secondly they try to retain old customers by sending related products or offers.
Content Creation
Content play a vital role in success of any online business. Because its used in every form of digital marketing. Content is the key path to communicate with audience or customers. As its important part of digital marketing. Sales and marketing teams should discuss the strategy about how to target the audience through content for both marketing as well as for sales. Which means not only try create brand awareness or generate leads, but also add content that push customers to complete purchase process. Stats show sales enablement is not considered by 76% marketers while creating content. Keep following tips in mind for creating marketing and sales content to get better results.
a. Consistent
Consistency in content writing help to grow your audience. Keep your audience update with your product and services. Content writing for marketing or sales purpose is a continues practice to engage audience with online content. Make a calender or schedule for your content publishing
b. Target Audience
Identify your audience or specify to whom your are writing for. Or In other words who are your targeted audience and whats the purpose of writing this content. Is it just for creating brand awareness, or writing for sales purpose or to generate leads.
c. Imagery
Visual Imagery is in trends for digital marketing. Content with more images, videos, info graphics, gif or illustrations getting more attention then the long text articles. So add some imagery while publishing content on any platform. It deliver more information in less time and easy to remember.
d. Correct Promotion platform
Different platforms are their to publish your content and grab audience to your website. But before creating content keep in mind for which platform you are going to create content. Because every platform has its own dynamics and type of audience. So publish content of correct platform to get better results.
Buyer Persona
Buyer Persona is the identification and classification of target audience on the basis of their interest and behaviour. What They care about? What they do? And other things like that. IN other words it gives an idea or picture plan marketing and sales activities. Mostly business thought its marketing team who is only responsible for creating buyer persona. Whereas Sales team input while creating buyer persona can make it more effective. By adding queries related to their buying process. Or buying decision. Secondly sales team also help in creating Buying Process map. Suggest steps for engaging users or audience and push them towards sales.
Some other tips while creating buyer persona. That help in creating effective buyer persona
a. Competition
Keep the business competitor in mind while creating your buyer persona activities. What competitors are doing with audience and how customers react to their products and services.
b. Identify issues
Secondly perform in-depth search for the issues in the industry. What the problem users facing? What’s the solution people want for their problem? Try to address users issue
c. Customer Behavior
Know the customer behavior because its important for attracting or engaging new users or existing customer. Observe their behavior how they react to your product or services. How they react to your competitors and what they want for solution of their problems
d. Trends
Consider the marketing trends while creating buyer persona. Follow the trends and focus what people are searching for. Plan your buyer persona or marketing strategy according to those trends
e. Constraints or Barriers
Not go beyond your limits while creating buyer persona. Know your limits and create buyer persona with in the limits. Not consider things you don’t go for. Always be realistic in every marketing activity.
Optimization loops
Consider Closed loops or Optimization Loops to see the performance of marketing and sales departments. Closed Loop is communication between sales and marketing to analyse the activities done by users in his complete purchase process. For that they analyse following steps he performed on the website
Visitor On the Site Initial step is visitor came on the site through any mean that include search engine, paid ads, social media or any other.
Visitor Browse Site After visiting the site which activities he had performed the pages he visited. See things more attracted the user
Converted Into leads See the page he visited before moving to the landing page or converted into the leads
Converted into customers Note the step user took while moving from lead to a customers or completing purchase process. .
Feedback loops
Improve your strategy with feedback loops. It provide feedback about the strategy or content used to promote products or services. That help in creating better strategies for business success. Encourage feedback from customer and analyse data about sales and marketing for better planning. Different tips for feedback loops are
a. Surveys
One of the popular method is to offer surveys. Where users can give their feedback about particular products or topic. Social Media or Review sites can be used to conduct these type of survey. Own site is also be a source for these type of survey.
b. Constructive and Negative Customer Feed Back
Encourage positive or negative feedback about your services or brand. Because both effect your strategy in a good way. So don’t ignore negative feedback. Take its as constructive and improve areas highlighted in the negative feedback.
Reporting
Reporting is the performance indicator that lead to analyse the performance of any campaign or strategy. Better reporting can help to understand the thing in better and also guide to build new strategy for your campaigns. While creating reports keep following things in mind
a. Purpose of Report
Know the purpose of marketing campaign what you want from this reports and why this reports is needed
b. Visual Elements
Secondly add some visual elements like graphs, charts, comparison. They deliver information in quick and easy way.
Analytics
To Review the data or statistics collected from reporting we use analytics. Its the performance indicator. Highlight area where there is a need of development and better performing areas. In help in different ways that include
- Optimize Sales Funnel
- Identify Areas of Growth
- Increase Sales and Efficiency
For Sales and Marketing Different analysis can be done
- Sales Trend Analysis
- Sales Performance Analysis
- Sales predictive analysis
- Pipeline analysis
- Product sales analysis
- Diagnostic analysis
Sales and Marketing Alignment With Getresponse
Getresponse a well known marketing software. That help in creating email campaign,s marketing automation, paid ads. Also help in aligning sales and marketing to get better results. With Getresponse and Getresponse CRM, automate CRM Pipeline management, Add contacts to crm and others.
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