At this point, it is important to discuss how the sales activities are closely interlinked with the marketing efforts in a company and how this is important to consider when you are building the sales organisation. Integrating and aligning marketing plans to sales goals will create an integrative approach towards continuous growth. Because of these synergies, every marketing effort should be in line with a comprehensive sale strategy with a common goal to produce not only new consumers but also repeated business as well.
This integration between sales and marketing starts with agreeing on how the company will attack the target group and audience. The generated leads must be acquired, which requires an elaborate marketing agenda that addresses potential clients matching the profile developed by the sales department. Having buyer personas developed jointly through marketing and selling, guarantees that what is communicated, messaged, and channelled by marketing are appealing to the targeted customers. Such an alignment ensures seamless movement of leads from the marketing funnel into sales pipeline.
Additionally, a similar scorecard with KPIs, offers common grounds to measure the efficiency of both sales and marketing strategies. This includes lead conversion and acquisition cost as well as sales revenue generated by either team. In addition, regular analysis to these metrics among marketing and sales teams builds an atmosphere of permanent improvements.
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Strategic content creation also requires a common strategy matching marketing and sales objectives. Those who develop marketing materials like blog posts, white papers and social media content have to create buzz as well as move through a journey of the sales funnel. Such content will give a lot of opportunities for the sales team to interact with prospects at different stages and make sure the provided information corresponds to the current need. The alignment enables an easy transitioning of leads to the sales team thus reducing friction along the conversion process.
Technology increases this bond between marketing and sales. An integrated approach that allows all the teams to have an overview about every interaction with a customer enables both parties to see what is happening with customers at a holistic approach. Marketing automation tools help in the smooth processing of these lead nurturing activities and assist sales teams with leads ready to be converted. By coordinating the usage of all these tools, this will lead to homogenised approach towards interaction with customers throughout the sales process.
There is also a strong link between market and product strategy since they involve issues such as brand messaging and positioning. The consistency in a brand’s story builds trust and maintains customer engagement. Consistency of the message throughout touch points improves brand credibility and helps create smooth pathway from first awareness to a purchase.