It is unquestionably vital that your sales and marketing teams be well-aligned in order to provide the best possible client experience.
Your Prospects Will Suffer if You Don’t
Consider This Scenario:
Your prospect has been looking at a new video conferencing product for many weeks. She’s finally identified one firm in particular that she’s really interested in — yours.
Your prospect chooses to read a number of blog pieces on your website before contacting a sales representative. She also obtains an ebook, views your company’s YouTube videos, and participates in a number of your community forums.
After your marketing materials have persuaded her that your product may be a suitable match for her, she chooses to contact one of your company’s sales representatives.
Unfortunately, the sales representative has no prior knowledge of the material with which the prospect has previously engaged. The sales agent launches into a boilerplate beginning sales presentation, oblivious to the fact that your prospect is nearly ready to purchase – she just has a few last questions.
As a consequence, your prospect will have a less-than-ideal user experience and will not feel as valued as someone who has been engaging with your brand’s content for weeks.
This is also not a good experience for your company’s sales or marketing employees. If the sales person was aware of the material with which the prospect had engaged, they would be able to connect with the prospect and grasp her requirements more quickly.
Finally, well-aligned sales and marketing teams have a significant influence on your company’s bottom line. Companies with well-aligned sales and marketing teams, on average, produce 208 percent more income from marketing activities.
However, if your marketing and sales teams are mostly remote or work from separate places, aligning the teams might be much more difficult than it would be in-person. This is where effective remote leadership comes into play.
3 Pointers to Help Distributed Marketing and Sales Teams Align
1. Ensure That Your Marketing and Sales Teams’ Objectives Are in Sync
You’ve aligned objectives across teams isn’t enough. Instead, you must demonstrate it using some of the metrics. And, whether your team is remote or in-office, you’ll want to keep encouraging sessions that enable both teams to pivot if your present approach isn’t allowing the teams to operate well together.
Assume your sales team has set “inform customers about new product features” as a main aim for the year. This purpose, however, has not been well conveyed with the marketing staff.
This, without a doubt, produces friction for the possibility. Before interacting with a sales agent, a prospect may get a plethora of high-quality marketing materials, such as ebooks, blog posts, webinars, emails, and YouTube videos. They may be caught off guard if the majority of marketing materials fail to highlight the product’s new features.
It is simpler for both your sales and marketing teams to fulfil their responsibilities successfully. If they are well-aligned on a few important objectives.
Most significantly, aligning your teams makes it easy for your prospects and customers. You don’t want your prospects to have the impression that your firm is unorganised or that they’re getting mixed messages from various departments within your broader organisation.
2. Request That Your Marketing Staff Listen in on Sales Calls or Participate in Slack Chats
If your sales force is predominantly remote, it is probable that your sales professionals complete transactions primarily via video or conference calls rather than in-person client visits. This might make it simpler to incorporate marketing into the sales process, or it could allow marketing executives to listen in on prospect talks on occasion to verify the marketing team is producing appropriate material.
For example, remote work makes it simpler than ever for marketers to listen in on customer and prospect conversations to better understand their personas, generate empathy for sales agents, and get a better knowledge of what content and message really resonates.
Furthermore, as the leader of a remote team, you must “encourage everyone to participate to communication through Slack, email, or SMS.” “Encourage a team member to share a good idea or a success story with the bigger group if you hear it.” This concept can also help your marketing and sales teams align — for example, you could invite members of your marketing team to your sales team’s Slack channel so they can take note of customer concerns and successes and consider using those stories as Case Studies or by highlighting the customer in a company newsletter.
3. Create Formal and Informal Collaboration Possibilities for Sales and Marketing.
For over two years, a majority remote sales team has informed me about a few methods he’s utilised to enhance team bonding and cross cooperation. Setting clear expectations and being honest when working with cross-functional teams is vital in any sort of collaboration, but it is more important when the cooperation is distant. You may try holding a couple of cross-departmental virtual meetings once a month or once a quarter. For example, Hambor’s team meets with a Relevate Marketing Manager once a month for a standup meeting during which both teams may raise questions and ensure their goals are matched.
By ensuring your sales staff has access to marketing plans and priorities, you’re guaranteeing your sales representatives have a solid awareness of your prospects’ whole start-to-finish buyer’s journey, allowing them to meet prospects wherever and whenever they want to be met.
In addition, Hambor notes that he often conducts weekly happy hours, team competitions, and other more informal activities to foster team cohesion. Create a quarterly remote happy hour, quiz game, or cross-departmental bonding activity to help unify your sales and marketing teams.
Finally, whether your teams are remote, in-person, or a hybrid of the two, Hambor believes it’s critical as a manager to demonstrate that you care about your workers’ well-being. “It’s critical that you enquire how your staff are doing… and genuinely care,” Hambor explains. They might be going through something you aren’t aware of. It’s critical that you really care about their well-being and success. The last thing you want is for your distant employees to feel alone and uncomfortable enough to reach out and seek for assistance.
After implementing some of the aforementioned techniques, try issuing a survey to your sales and marketing teams to gain feedback on other possible possibilities for cross-departmental collaboration and partnership. Your marketing and sales teams, as well as your prospects and customers, will be grateful.
