Benefits of Sales and Marketing Alignment in Business Processes
Alignment in sales and marketing is a synergy of communication systems, strategies and shared goals that enable them to operate as a unit. Working together through an aligned team can improve marketing activities, sales effectiveness, and ultimately increase revenue.
Historically, sales and marketing have worked in a “silo” which means they were segmented from each other. Sales will be the funnel and marketing will be the bottom. Marketing often prepares leads and hands them over to the sales team.
How to Overcome Sales and Marketing Misalignment
The roles of the sales and marketing teams actually have the same goal in driving revenue so it is important to keep them aligned. If sales and marketing run well, the potential for increasing business performance will run in harmony.
If the two do not align well, this will hinder the company's growth. The following are conflicts that often occur between sales and marketing and how to align them to your business conditions:
- Establish a center of excellence that serves sales and marketing equally to ensure that your technology is integrated to minimize messy customer data
- Create content that meets sales needs effectively resulting in greater adoption of marketing content so that no time is wasted
- Create a mutual agreement on how leads are scored and how quickly sales should follow up on them so both teams will operate more efficiently
- Provide appreciation for team achievements to reduce difficulties in realizing ROI so that the alignment process creates a more transparent view of the sales and marketing process
Benefits of Sales and Marketing Alignment
Sales and marketing must work together to shepherd prospects and opportunities through to the finish line. In general, sales and marketing integration can help drive better results to provide the following benefits:
1. Clearer understanding of consumers
Sales and marketing are charged with attracting, maintaining and closing transactions in a business process. That's why it's important to be on the same page about the target consumers you need to reach.
This will be much easier to do if you create accurate buyer profiles when the team works as one. It is important to know the roles that must be involved in following up on consumer needs.
A clear and mutually agreed understanding will be able to promote shared ownership of the customer experience. This will also minimize unclear engagement when it is felt that a prospect is not manifesting well.
2. More feedback from consumers
Both sales and marketing gather relevant knowledge about customer prospects while interacting and observing them. Cohesive customer intelligence will pave the way for higher conversion and achievement rates.
Sharing insights about behaviors, preferences, interests, barriers, and even opinions can position both teams to better identify and engage the most promising potential customers.
In fact, the more detailed the customer prospect records are, the more accurate the sales team will be in directing prospects. They also won't spend too much time figuring out priorities.
3. Better implementation of consumer feedback
Collaboration allows sales and marketing teams to respect and respond to each other's abilities. In addition, there is a greater possibility of increasing priority to integrate various customer data in one system so that it is easier to act when needs arise from consumers.
4. Better support from business leaders
When the executive team sees sales and marketing's commitment to coordinating, they will be motivated to help ensure the success of that alignment. This support can extend to dedicating resources and making sure to maintain them.
For example, integrating all necessary tools and even modifying compensation plans to accurately reflect and reward joint efforts. In a broad context, of course this will also simplify the work process of the sales and marketing team.
5. Clearer strategy
Sales and marketing alignment allows businesses to gain long-term value. By planning, promoting and aligning, the company will strengthen the impact of the various strategies implemented by sales and marketing.
When sales and marketing have a big picture of how to generate revenue, they can work together to shape and realize it. Alignment will improve high-level business strategies for the growth of a business.
For those of you who want to improve cooperation patterns in the company or start a new business, make sure to carry out good coordination between the sales and marketing teams. Company executives can also prepare profit-oriented and non-profit strategies.
Through the Marketing Management certification program, anyone can take part in case studies and learning to support the company's efforts to achieve the company's vision, mission and strategic plans. This will be a productive effort if all divisions work together to achieve company goals.
