A huge mistake many companies make without realizing is not having their sales and marketing teams communicate with each other. Instead, they separate themselves from each other whilst trying to achieve the same goal. Sales teams often blame marketing for the quality of the leads they provide, whereas marketing tends to blame sales for not being able to follow through with the leads they have generated.
Here are 5 reasons why it is crucial for sales and marketing teams to collaborate:
1. Better leads
The sales team know your customers better than anyone else in the business. Having your sales team gather important customer information and pass it onto marketing can help target the correct audience and generate more qualified leads. Sales spend a lot of time getting to know each customer personally and have a better insight, marketers can use this information to produce better quality content that will engage more effectively with future clients. Sales often blame marketing for not producing good leads and good material to support sales. Marketing often complains sales receive lots of leads from them and never convert any! When they communicate and work together, they can assess what is working and what isn’t. With joint focus they can dramatically improve lead quality and sales. Communication and collaboration are key.
2. Better sales materials
Sales rely heavily on the materials the marketing department produce. Whether it is brochures, advertising an event, website content, promotional material, presentation materials or proposals. Rather than marketing produce what they think the customer wants, sales can let marketing know exactly what they need – marketing can then produce professional support material to help sales close the deal.
3. Staying ahead of your competitors
A key strategy most marketing departments use is analysing what competitors are doing in the market. However, if they disconnected from the sales team, this data cannot progress much further to gain new leads. With planned collaboration between both teams, marketers can pass on up-to-date competitor information to the sales team so they have full information to enable suitable approaches towards each customer and know where they have the advantage.
4. Better feedback and goal achievement
Creating a strong relationship between sales and marketing teams will improve the way they communicate and feedback, which in turn will help them stay on track to achieve goals. Often both teams are working on the same / similar end goal separately, by working together they can form a strategic plan, adjust it if need be and come up with news ways to achieve goals.
5. Increases revenue production
Do you realise just how much sales and marketing not working together can you’re your business? It was recently reported that it costs businesses 68% of sales leads never converting. However, for those organisations were sales and marketing work well together they close 30% more deals and achieve 208% higher revenue. These figures alone should tell you that ensuring your sales and marketing teams collaborate will lead directly to venue growth for your business.
If you are interested in Sales Training, contact Sales Training International on +44 (0) 1704 889325 or email info@salestrainingint.com for more information.
