Helpful Tips For Aligning Your Digital Marketing and Sales Goals

Many sales and marketing departments in companies run separately, with each team working to prove its superiority over the other. In today’s market where consumers meet the salesperson while they are in the last quarter of the last cycle, teamwork between sales and marketing teams is crucial to the success of the business.

There are several ways you can work to improve teamwork between the sales and marketing department to ensure you meet your KPIs and overall business objectives.

Set Common Goals

Start out with common goals and objectives for both teams, with a set reporting standard that both parties understand. This way, salespersons and marketers see themselves as people on the same team working together towards a common goal instead of working against each other.

Communication

The best way to improve alignment between your sales and marketing departments is to encourage frequent inter-departmental communication and information sharing. Start with regular meetings either monthly or twice a month to review the quality of your leads.

Create an open platform where the sales team can share feedback, requests and questions they receive from prospective clients with the marketing team to inform marketing initiatives.

Lastly, encourage your marketers to accompany the sales team on sales calls every so often; they may come across information they may not have considered, sparking new ideas and approaches in your marketing initiatives.

Take Advantage of the Sales Cycle

Today’s customers are more savvy and sophisticated; they spend a substantial amount of time on the internet self-educating and learning about different options available in the market. Once you understand this, you can re-align your digital marketing strategy to meet your prospects’ needs as follows:

1. Include attractive messages to draw prospects in
2. Create engaging marketing campaigns that help you improve your credibility and earn the loyalty of your prospects
3. Prepare for conversion. When the time is right, your prospects will automatically think of you

Your sales team will help your marketing team understand customer interests and their progress through the sales cycle.

Collect and Utilize Available Data

Data does not lie. It is quite common for your sales or marketing team to show preference to certain topics, initiatives or particular processes. Once both teams use the same date, it can help diffuse situations that may be creating tension.

Go through the data together to assess whether the marketing initiatives create conversions, the paths prospects are taking to convert and the strategies that are leading to conversions versus the strategies that need altering.

Create Similar Success Metrics

Sales teams often work with strict metrics for success, with monthly benchmarks they must achieve. Implementing similar or related metrics to the marketing team sets a standard that motivates both teams to work towards set goals and objectives.

Getting both teams working together increases your chances of success.

Follow up on Leads

Generating leads takes time and effort from both teams. However, the action you take to nurture the leads once they convert in some way such as filling the contact form, subscribing to a service or downloading an asset matters.

Set your objectives before starting any marketing initiative to help both teams understand their specific objectives and the business goals the initiative is working to support.

Once you start working to align your marketing and sales efforts, you will identify alternative opportunities to help improve your business objectives. For example, you may realize you need expertise in either field or additional manpower to help you meet your goals.

Once you set your overall team goals, give us a shout at Neon Goldfish. We can help you with strategizing and execution to complement both teams.