We’re in a customer-centric world where businesses must evolve and adapt to meet the demanding expectations of today’s consumer in order to survive. This means CMOs need to adjust their org chart and revamp their marketing strategy to meet evolving customer expectations and the ability to reach them via new touch points.
Most marketing departments have made notable improvements compared to years ago; however, we still see organizations are changing more slowly than the marketplace around them.
The roles of marketing and sales are shifting in parallel with the rise of technology and increasing consumer demands. From the first marketing touch point to the final point where a sale is made, marketing and sales teams must work together to manage the customer journey during the various stages of the lead/sales funnel. They must also work together to nurture the customer beyond the sales funnel and pipeline.
Gone are the days where sales and marketing could each work in their own silo. In today’s competitive environment communication is key to success. And if either side isn’t committed to shared success, your business will suffer.
How Marketing and Sales Can Work Together to Grow Sales
Video by Michal Sadowski
Tips from Marketing Recruitment Agencies: How CMOs Can Crush the Barriers Between Marketing and Sales
Effective leadership in the C-suite is key in building the right teams and joining these two departments together. CMOs should guide their teams toward collaboratively working with the sales department and breaking down the barriers to maximize results.
As the top marketing recruitment firm, we have found 6 ways CMOs can effectively propel business growth by building an alliance with sales:
Keep an Open Line of Communication
While this seems obvious, too often we still hear of poor communication between marketing and sales. So this has the be the first step in aligning marketing and sales. Establishing transparent communication between the two teams is critical.
Marketing is responsible for developing the message and strategy behind a brand’s products or services.
CMOs must ensure their team clearly understands the new consumer and their high expectations to successfully enable the sales team. As marketing executive recruiters, we know a shared brand vision is important to establish in an organization, especially between the marketing and sales departments. The more valuable information and knowledge that is exchanged between the two teams, the better.
Revenue and Pipeline Come First
For marketing and sales to be impactful, both teams must be fully aligned on what they need from each other. Both the marketing and sales teams should be held accountable for a shared set of performance metrics. This ensures their objectives are aligned and allows them to work toward a common goal. Importantly while they share metrics, they cannot share a leader. Marketing and sales are very different functions and one leader cannot effectively do both.
Marketing and sales should always make the buyer the center of attention. For sales to provide the greatest value, marketing must provide insights on key points in their journey. Thus, your marketing team should be in charge of delivering measurable results and data that help sales build their pipelines. Improved pipelines in turn allow marketing to get better insights into what converts prospects into customers, and when.
A shared goal drives optimal results. By providing visibility into future potential revenue and working together to convert qualified leads through pipelines, both the marketing and sales teams heighten their chances of increasing revenue.
Don’t Underestimate Data Integrity
Does your marketing team have the right people in place to measure and monitor results from your efforts and make sense of analytics and data?
The marketing department must share data they have on customer decision making, buyer behavior, and any other relevant information that can help the sales team strategically target qualified leads.
That’s why it’s imperative to have the right marketers who are analytically-driven and able to accurately translate data into valuable information on your team. We are in a data-driven world, and businesses can’t afford any errors with the measurements of their data.
Everyone on the marketing and sales teams should be responsible for the integrity of data that is entered and used. However, the CMO is ultimately accountable for the accuracy and consistency of the analytics provided by their marketing team, which makes data integrity from the sales team critical.
Integrate Marketing and Sales Software Platforms
The ongoing development of tools and technology in the business world allows organizations to manage processes and operations more efficiently.
Just as technology has transformed marketing, digital is redefining the customer and sales relationship. Both marketing and sales have access to a vast number of tools to leverage in optimizing their efforts. In order to successfully align the marketing and sales teams, their software platforms must be accessible to each other.
Your martech should support in determining qualified leads, collecting insightful data points in the process and being able to deliver key points to sales at the right time. By sharing valuable data, both teams have the ability to see into a prospect’s full customer journey and buying cycle.
As marketing executive recruiters we see too often companies are hiring someone new, because the last person did not effectively integrate their automation systems for sales (i.e. CRM) and marketing (i.e. marketing automation). Without this integration, it is impossible to truly maximize results.
Engage Sales in the Content Creation Process
Your marketing team is likely responsible for creating the content that the sales department uses to close deals.
By implementing proper tools and getting a better understanding of the journey, marketers can optimize content to be mapped at specific points along the journey. This allows the sales team to serve the right type of content at the right stage in the sales cycle.
However, your marketing team must be able to identify what type of content is helping the sales team in closing deals and making an impact. Not only is it important to find marketing talent who knows how to create compelling content, but also can identify what type of content is performing well. This is why marketing recruitment agencies place such a big emphasis on finding content marketers who are able to accurately gauge and measure the performance of content, in addition to being great writers.
Simply put, marketing must provide unique and valuable content that serves the future customers’ needs, and there’s no one better to share insights than the sales team that directly communicates with prospects and existing customers.
Take Everyone’s Perspectives into Consideration
The CSO (Chief Sales Officer) and CMO should regularly hold meetings to discuss what’s working, what’s not, and how their efforts are impacting revenue.
However, the C-level leaders should encourage more junior-level employees to take a part in the dialogue. Those who are on the front lines of your marketing and sales teams should actively take part in discussing the strategy and how each team is contributing to the revenue growth.
Involving junior-level employees is a key way to get a comprehensive understanding of what’s assisting each sale, what isn’t, and how your entire team measures their efforts. With key players taking an active role in breaking down the barriers between marketing and sales, you will get insightful perspectives from those who work directly with your customers.
Conclusion
Uniting your marketing and sales teams is necessary to propel long-term business growth. In today’s demanding digital world, organizations simply cannot afford to work in silos any longer.
CMOs must demonstrate that their marketing team isn’t just delivering value to sales, but must also show that they’re consistently contributing to the ROI.
When marketing and sales departments don’t work in collaboration, it hinders the performance of your marketing efforts and the bottom-line of your organization. With the support of a strong team of top marketers in place and an improved relationship with sales, you can expect your efforts to be taken to a whole new level.