Sales and marketing departments are the keys to every business assuring revenue growth. The teams work in tandem and it makes the alignment of sales and marketing crucial. Companies without the collaboration of these two departments are sure to struggle to attain buyer engagement.
9 Steps to Align Sales and Marketing to Achieve Total Buyer Engagement
1. Focus on your customers
The primary driver of customer satisfaction is the action behind any team. It relates to customer relationship management eliminating, tension, competition, and focus on quotas. Alignment takes place naturally with both teams. It is in the buying stage, where teams, marketing, and sales please customers. Prioritizing customers’ needs is the focus, and this initiative promotes collaboration in teams.
2. Explain the steps of the sales funnel
The responsibilities of each team are different within the sales and marketing funnel. It typically owns activities at the funnel top in building brand awareness, creating a marketing plan, and generating leads. The sales team handles the funnel bottom with marketing plan execution and lead follow-up. The funnel steps definition averts confusion and ensures accountability, and time management, highlighting collaboration opportunities.
3. Share marketing and sales feedback
It is essential to create a powerful funnel for the sales team to get insights and interact with potential customers. It leads the buyers in getting the right information and ascertains the buying process during the stages. For both sides, time is precious. Sharing insights and marketing automation help build efficient mechanisms towards knowledge sharing is beneficial.
4. Ensure disciplined and frequent communication
Increase communication between marketing teams and sales. Ensure, it is structured and requires scheduling. Keep the communication disciplines, consistent, and organized. It will keep both teams aware of what and when to expect. Devote time and create an agenda to discuss the next steps that are action items toward buyer engagement.
5. Integrate the metrics of Sales and MarketingÂ
Focusing on the customer, improving communication, and defining funnel steps calls for integrated metrics for both teams. The integration assures marketing and sales teams share meeting revenue goals and customer relationship management. Teams can focus and improve the lead quantity and quality or align with customer needs.
6. Align rewards and recognition
Most companies close new deals and compensate sales teams while they market teams. It helps receive lead recognition. A successful marketing automation strategy and sales acknowledge adding value at each funnel step. Recognizing and rewarding members of the funnel at each step emphasizes respect for the effort. It results in generating more leads.
7. Control of content management
Teams have integrated goals and shared focus. Good content management is mandatory for the marketing and sales teams to use and satisfy their communication needs. Keeping organized content, up to date, and easy to access, ensures time management and consistency. The marketing team should develop resources and inform the sales team to use them.
8. Leverage automated notifications
Marketing automation solutions and CRM set up a notification for actions. Marketing virtually can act and notify sales. There are endless possibilities for leveraging automated notifications. It is the best alignment strategy between sales and marketing.
9. Conduct monthly meetingsÂ
Marketing and sales teams meeting should be once a month and they collaborate to work properly. Yet to ascertain whether the alignment is good, ask a few questions
1. Are salespeople meeting SLAs and completing tasks assigned?
2. Are marketing leads qualifying early, late, or at the right time?
3. What do sales lack and need from marketing
4. Is the content from marketing enough for the effective engagement of prospects
5. Are leads piling in the lead lifecycle, and is the mechanism of lead scoring accurate
6. If there is any sort of bottlenecking, how to fix it?
Meeting once a month keeps teams in grasp and on the same page.
