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Sales and Marketing: Can't We Just Be Friends?

Denver Marketing Firms, Denver Marketing Firm, Inbound MarketingMost Denver marketing firms don’t like sales departments, mostly because most sales departments don’t like them.  But why?  If you think about it, these two departments should be best friends.  Marketing helps sales by informing potential customers about the brand before they ever see a salesman and sales helps marketing by signing new clients brought in and helping the company grow.  Instead, all you’ll hear about marketing from a salesman is that they’re uppity academics who don’t really know what it’s like out in the business world while marketing only seems to see sales people as lead wasters who don’t spend enough time working on potential customers that were given to them.

All this negative language and fighting can’t, and in reality isn’t good for any business and needs to change.  Inbound marketing looks to provide a solutionthrough what is known as Smarketing, which is nothing more than the integration and cooperation of the sales and marketing departments.  If implemented correctly, your company could see up to 20% higher annual revenue growth!  As you can see, it pays to make sales and marketing get along, so here’s what you need to do:

Align Around Their Goals and Personas

No matter if it's 2 kids trying to become friends or 2 departments that hate each other coming together, understanding things about the other party is the first thing you must do in order to get along.  Take the time to sit both your departments down and lay out what each of them are required to do in their jobs so that the other department has a better understanding of exactly what the other does.  This meeting is crucial when it comes to aligning your Denver marketing firm’s department with sales.  Not only do the departments gain a better understanding of the day to day on the other end, but they can also start to work toward more accurate and efficient campaigns.

One of the first things that should be covered in this meeting is the creation of new buyer personas with the help of the sales department’s specific knowledge of the type of clients they normally deal with.  This information helps the marketing department greatly, allowing them to form more detailed and accurate personas to work off of that are in line with what the sales department is looking for.  Already both departments are getting what they want!

Once these personas are created, both departments need to understand what they need to do in order to be successful.  For sales, it’s contacting and following up on leads within certain time periods along with meeting quotas, while for marketing it’s providing a specific number of leads to help sales meet their goals.  These goals or calculated quotas and the departments’ agreement to meet them are what is known as service level agreements.

When it comes to the goals for the sales department, most of it is predetermined by upper management with quotas.  Take the time to understand just how much effort it takes to turn a customer into a lead and then figure out how many leads the marketing department needs to provide in order for sales to convert just one into a customer.  If the process is a long and complicated one with a low conversion rate, perhaps marketing needs to be providing a higher number or leads for sales.  Once this number is established, sales must then calculate how much time they need to be spending on each lead so that they are capitalizing on every qualified lead that is being brought to them.  From this, marketing gets a better understanding of who they need to be targeting and how many leads they need to produce while sales gets more of the leads they want and understands how much time they should be spending on each one so that they have the best chance of bringing in the maximum amount of customers!

Get them on the same page

Understanding what leads are sales ready and when to hand them over to the sales department is another key component when it comes to integrating your marketing and sales department.  By defining the different stages of the sales funnel and when leads are qualified and ready for a sales person to talk to helps both departments understand the process better while making their efforts much more efficient.

Establish Communication and Reporting

Now that both of your departments seem to be on the same page, it’s time to implement these new changes and reap the benefits.  But don’t make it just a one-time thing!  Instead, schedule weekly and monthly meetings between the marketing and sales departments or at least the heads in order to establish timely communication and hold both parties accountable.  These meetings can include reporting on campaigns, trend analysis, product and client updates as well as brainstorming on how to further improve future campaigns.  Marketing can come away with more accurate content to effectively target their market while sales benefits from stronger reporting measures that help them become more efficient.

When you look at both the marketing and sales departments through an inbound marketing lens, it’s easy to see how the two can be the best of friends.  Each side has something they can help the other with in order for the entire company to succeed, so make sure that you’re sales and marketing departments are getting along and reap the benefits!