While a little friendly competition can be beneficial, sales and marketing perform much better when they work together to create personalized, consistent buyer experiences and, in return, stronger relationships and greater ROIs. Today’s buyers use digital to learn about and purchase solutions, so the prospect’s user experience needs to be top priority for both sales and marketing. In order to compete in today’s digital landscape with informed buyers, it is how to fuse marketing with sales to deliver engaged, brand-aware prospects, not if. Companies must integrate their marketing and sales departments to create a solid, driven team. Workhorse has come up with three ways to help successfully integrate sales and marketing.
1. Align Your Culture
While both sales and marketing should own revenue responsibility and actively create a well-vetted target audience, the company culture must enforce the equality and necessity of both departments. Sales cannot be seen as simply the closer and marketing must not be considered simply a provider of services. In a culture of shared ownership, responsibility and equality, marketing and sales are inclined to look for what works best for the prospect rather than themselves. And, when prospects see a unified front, the company looks more experienced, stable, and trustworthy.
2. Strategize Your Communication
When integrating sales and marketing, there’s a need for consistent language and communication, as well as personalization, for each prospect. Some of the most common problems when it comes to integration between sales and marketing stem from failure to follow-up, inconsistency or redundancy, or lack of information. Both sales and marketing must participate in a closed-loop reporting system to eliminate duplication, to keep data up-to-date, and to prioritize leads. Any communication from marketing and sales should be discussed and tailored to each prospect to ensure a positive experience and a constant brand image.
3. Nurture Prospects Together
Once leads have been identified, marketing needs to remain an active partner, leveraging campaigns like social and ABM to keep the brand top of mind with prospects. And regardless of the time and energy put into finding leads, just as much needs to be spent on nurturing those leads, reinforcing your messaging. Marketing already has third-party and internal data, as well as customer insights, so use that information to continue to encourage prospects through sales. According to a LinkedIn study, 90% of business decision-makers said they are more likely to consider a brand’s products or services if shown content that’s applicable to their decision-making role. Even after a prospect becomes a client, sales and marketing must continue to work side by side to build and maintain relationships while offering new services.
When marketing is integrated with sales, companies can better serve their prospects and clients, offering a well-informed team and a positive, strategized experience.
