Sales in marketing. Sales and marketing. Sales versus marketing. What is the relationship between these two sides of your business? Are they opposed or do they work together? This article will help you get to the bottom of the matter.
Getting sales and marketing to work together can transform your business as it’ll unify your approach to selling and branding. Read on to find out how to unify your sales and marketing teams.
What is Sales in Marketing?
Sales in marketing is essentially the final step of the marketing process. It’s when you start to sell your products rather than just advertise them: when you turn leads or prospects into actual customers.
But what are the differences between sales and marketing?
Sales and marketing are closely related. Although they have their own roles and activities, they’re ultimately working toward the same goal: increasing your revenue and getting you more customers. By understanding this difference, and how it impacts processes like rolling forecast best practices, you can improve both your sales and marketing teams.
While marketing focuses on creating awareness and generating leads, sales is responsible for directly engaging with potential customers to convert them into paying clients.
Sales activities are often more targeted and personalized. They often involve direct communication rather than trying to reach customers broadly via social media or email lists. Sales teams are all about closing deals and building customer relationships so they can boost short-term revenue.
8 Strategies to Strengthen Collaboration Between Sales and Marketing
If you want sales and marketing to work optimally together, they need to be in sync at every stage of the customer journey. These eight strategies, full of actionable tips, will help you strengthen the link between sales and marketing.
1. Shared Goals and KPIs
Make sure your sales and marketing teams have shared goals. Both teams should target specific revenue numbers or customer acquisition metrics. You need everyone working towards the same big-picture goals.
- Tip: Why not schedule quarterly video call meetings between sales and marketing leaders? This is where you can make sure everyone’s activities align with shared, high priority goals.
Big goals are important, but you’ll need a way to measure them. A good way to do this is through key performance indicators (KPIs). You can define common KPIs that matter to both sales and marketing.
These shared KPIs might include lead-to-customer conversion rates as well as customer acquisition costs (CAC) and customer lifetime value (CLV). Openly sharing these metrics will keep your teams accountable and focused on measurable goals.
Tip: Use a shared dashboard so sales and marketing teams can monitor performance metrics in real-time. This shared visibility means both teams can quickly address underperformance and build on successful strategies.
2. Account-Based Marketing (ABM)
The best leads need to be quickly engaged. In an ABM approach, marketing and sales work hand-in-hand to engage the most valuable accounts using highly personalized tactics. With such key accounts, marketing can develop specific campaigns to generate interest, while sales focuses on building relationships with decision-makers.
- Tip: Figure out what your key accounts are and create a joint account plan for both teams. Marketing can provide sales with tailored content for each account.
Sales and marketing should also collaborate on joint campaigns aimed at high-priority accounts. Marketing can handle engagement through channels like email and social media. And sales will focus on direct outreach, like phone calls or one-on-one meetings.
Tip: Develop a shared calendar for targeted accounts or industries. Marketing can use this to schedule digital ads that coincide with sales outreach, creating a sense of omnipresence for high-priority accounts.
3. Collaborative Lead Generation
Get sales and marketing together to create accurate buyer personas and a joint-agreed Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). When your marketers have a clear idea of the types of leads that convert best, they can edit their campaigns to attract those top prospects.
- Tip: Set up monthly workshops where sales and marketing team members can analyze all their recent wins and losses. Marketing can then use this info to update their campaigns based on what worked and what didn’t.
You should also put in place a lead scoring system. It should be one that both teams agree on and which will assign point values to leads based on criteria like company size or engagement level. Sales can then focus on the highest-scoring leads, while marketing can nurture the lower-scoring ones.
Tip: Use your CRM system to set up automated lead scoring and have regular reviews to adjust the criteria. This means that you’ll hand over only the most promising leads to the sales team, so no one wastes time on cold leads.
4. Content and Messaging Alignment
Customers often already know about a brand or product before they speak with sales, usually because of marketing efforts. So marketing can support sales by creating content that directly addresses customer issues. Your sales team can use sales enablement materials, like brochures or personalized email templates, to quickly and effectively engage leads.
- Tip: Encourage your marketing team to develop a content library specifically designed for your sales team. This should include targeted content for different stages of the buyer’s journey.
Make sure that your sales and marketing teams use consistent messaging and tone across all your channels, from digital marketing campaigns to outbound call scripts. If you want to create a strong brand identity, consistent messaging is a must.
Tip: Create a shared messaging guide that includes key selling points and advice on tone and your brand voice. Make sure you train all your sales and marketing reps so they’re very familiar with the content and regularly update the guide.
5. Effective Communication
It won’t surprise you to learn that frequent communication is key to aligning sales and marketing. Regular meetings will help your teams identify challenges and areas for improvement. This is especially important in fast-paced environments like an outbound call center, where real-time updates can improve call scripts and overall engagement.
- Tip: Schedule weekly stand-up meetings between sales and marketing. These should be brief (15-30 minutes) and focused on simple tasks like sharing updates and addressing immediate challenges.
You should also set up a well-structured feedback loop between sales and marketing. With this in place, should your sales team provide insights on lead quality and successful closing techniques, your marketing team can then use those insights to adjust their strategies.
Tip: Create a shared digital space (such as an instant messaging channel or a Google Doc) where sales reps can log feedback on marketing-generated leads. Marketing can then use this info to create better campaigns.
6. Technology Integration
Sales and marketing tech improves every year. You’ll make it much easier for your marketing and sales teams if you connect your CRM system to marketing automation tools. This will enable seamless handoffs between marketing and sales. This integration will mean that your sales teams can access the latest info about customer interactions at all times.
- Tip: Use automated alerts to notify sales reps when a lead performs a high-value act, like downloading a white paper or requesting a demo.
Open access to data between marketing and sales teams is crucial. Sales teams will benefit from knowing which campaigns are driving the most engagement, while marketing teams can learn from sales all about customer behaviors and problems.
Tip: Create a shared data repository. This is where both teams can access reports — but make sure it’s properly protected from data breaches. You could also have regular cross-department meetings to discuss data trends.
7. Post-Sale Collaboration
Marketing and sales teams shouldn’t stop working together just because they’ve combined to make a sale. Instead, they should continue to collaborate to drive customer retention. Marketing should create ongoing engagement campaigns while sales focuses on upselling opportunities.
- Tip: Put in place a post-sale follow-up program for both teams. This could involve marketers producing educational content and newsletters and sales scheduling regular check-ins.
Sales teams often have direct access to customer feedback. Sharing this feedback with marketing can further improve future campaigns and product offerings.
Tip: Set up a system that allows your sales reps to log customer feedback right away. Marketing can then analyze this feedback to refine your tactics like your messaging approach or product positioning.
8. Performance Analysis and Continuous Improvement
Both teams should regularly come together to analyze performance metrics. You should always review key data points, such as lead conversion rates and campaign performance, so both teams know what’s working and what isn’t.
- Tip: Use a collaborative project management tool to track and discuss performance metrics. You can create shared projects or boards where both sales and marketing teams can post updates and action items.
Continuous feedback and analysis is key. They prevent your approach from becoming stale, and ultimately help both teams to regularly improve their strategies and tactics. For example, marketing can adjust its campaigns based on real-time sales feedback, and sales can refine its approach based on customer responses to marketing efforts.
Tip: Establish a ‘test-and-learn’ culture. This is where both teams experiment with new tactics and analyze the results, not just as a one-off task but as a regular shared activity. This could involve A/B testing of different email approaches or adjusting call scripts based on campaign success.
Conclusion: Sales in marketing — two sides of the same coin?
You could think of sales and marketing as two sides of one coin. Marketing lays the groundwork. They capture attention. Sales then transforms that interest into tangible outcomes.
It’s the collaboration between the two that’s where the magic happens. Embrace the connection between sales and marketing. If these two teams work together in a strategic way (more than just a monthly meeting), you can have a stronger brand voice and convert more customers.
Frequently asked questions
Why is sales so important in marketing?
Sales is essential to marketing because it acts as a bridge between creating interest and closing sales. You may well attract potential customers through your marketing tactics. However, if they call your business phone number and find that your sales team provides a different tone or info, you’ll lose their trust and they won’t make a purchase.
What is a sales process?
A sales process is a sequence of steps your sales team follows to convert leads into customers. It will outline the stages and actions your sales team needs to follow, from first contact to final sale.
Originally published Sep 10, 2024, updated Sep 16, 2024
