How to align your sales and marketing efforts — and why you definitely should

They’re natural allies, your sales and marketing teams. After all, they’re both directly working towards the same goal: increased revenue.

Yet, so many organizations are suffering from a major misalignment of their sales and marketing efforts. And evidence suggests that this misalignment comes at a huge cost to both employee satisfaction AND revenue.

Marketing departments are overworked, spending countless hours developing strategies and implementing campaigns that don’t seem to generate the concrete results they want or deserve. And sales teams complain that they’re just not getting enough leads. Or that the leads they are getting are garbage.

This misalignment could be responsible for everything from the creation of poor-quality, ineffective marketing content to sales teams spending huge chunks of their time chasing unproductive new leads rather than converting warm leads. Meanwhile, potential customers, confused by the disjointed nature of your sales funnel, feel frustrated and are quick to look elsewhere.

So the question is, how do put an end to this siloing and create a “smarketing” department — a sales and marketing department working in tandem on a solid strategy that will increase revenue, keep your employees happy, and improve the entire buying experience for your customers?

1. Ensure open collaboration.

It’s a no-brainer but it’s always worth repeating: you can’t align your efforts without a real determination to work together.

At the very least, you should commit to regular meetings between your sales and marketing departments.

They can use these meetings to discuss their goals, work processes, potential and current obstacles, and ideas — and they should celebrate their successes together too. Let everyone see (and be sure to provide regular reminders!) that each department is equally valued and that they are true collaborators, working together towards a common objective.

A few out-of-office bonding sessions between the two departments tends to help this process along too!

2. Work together to define your organization’s ideal buyer.

So often a disjointed sales funnel is the result of a disjointed idea of your ideal buyer. 

However, when everyone in your marketing AND sales departments is 100% clear on who your customer is, on the problems they’re experiencing, on what matters to them, and on how your organization can help them, the entire buying cycle becomes shorter, more coherent, and infinitely more successful.

With an aligned approach, marketing efforts won’t just bring in more leads, they’ll bring in the right leads. While your sales team will be confident in nurturing these leads in the correct way throughout the buying process from initial contact to after care.

That makes defining your organization’s ideal buyer one of the key things to focus on during your new joint meetings.

3. Shared tools and work systems.

Of course, clearly defining what a quality lead looks like is one thing. But if your marketing and sales teams don’t have a clear process for what to do with those leads, you’ll still struggle to turn those prospects into actual sales revenue.

It’s vital, therefore, to make sure you have efficient processes in place. And this becomes far easier when both departments are working with the same tools and workflow systems.

Yes, implementing new systems may seem like a lot of work initially but it won’t be long before it pays off in terms of cohesion, efficiency, and sales results.

Improved conversion rates, a shorter sales cycle, increased revenue, and happier customers might sound like a pipedream if your current marketing efforts consistently fall short. But often, a stronger alignment between your marketing and sales departments is the one thing that would make a huge difference to your organization’s bottom line, employee engagement, and end-user satisfaction.

If aligning your marketing efforts with both your sales and business strategy feels like too big a challenge to tackle on your own — and it might, particularly if your marketing and sales departments often act like warring children! — it could be worth hiring a consultant to walk you through the process.

And remember, you don’t have to do any of this alone! I love helping small businesses create and apply marketing plans that give you the time, money, and growth you need to make your biggest goals a reality. So reach out! I’d love to help.