The marketing and sales alignment adds to the continuous improvement of the organizations that implement it, by reducing the possibilities of conflict of interest between both departments and, on the contrary, focusing their joint efforts on successfully closing more deals .
We present you 3 practices that will help facilitate the alienation of Marketing and Sales, thereby guaranteeing the strategic results of your business, including the generation of profitable customers, better sales and higher income.
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Smarketing, what is it and how to do it?
The main objective of smarketing is to minimize conflicts between departments and set common objectives and goals , to guarantee the quality of the leads and with it the successful closing of a greater number of sales to grow the company .
To facilitate the process of aligning areas and teamwork, it is convenient to direct smarketing practices under three key axes :
- Communication . For any integration process, the first step will have to be communication; encourage dialogue and constant interaction between both departments, in order to guarantee that the generation of contacts is aligned with each of its objectives.
- Motivation . It is important to keep the team up-to-date on the goals achieved as a whole, also to convene weekly or monthly meetings to recognize the efforts made and to track the progress of each department.
- Integration . The common management of information is a pillar for the efficient consolidation of teamwork; A solution to achieve this is the unification of the software with which each area works, in addition this helps to reduce operating times and costs.
The average annual growth of highly aligned organizations is 32%, while their less aligned counterparts see a 7% decrease (Aberdeen Group).
3 effective practices to align marketing and sales
The alignment will be the result of teamwork based on data or data driven approach , as well as effective communication between the marketing and sales areas, so that they have common objectives, goals and responsibilities.
The following practices can help you consolidate the alignment process:
1. Growth strategy alignment workshops
Give periodic workshops where business growth leaders meet and allow employees to be involved in the construction of the strategy to follow.
Ideally, all the parties involved can actively participate in the conception of the strategy , from deepening the definitions of the ideal client, the priorities of the growth strategy, the areas of opportunity, in order that the team is in tune.
In addition to opening a direct communication channel effectively to make evaluations and feedback regarding the work of each area with the strategy.
2. Share key information between areas
Establishing clear communication is essential to achieve the objectives of smarketing , therefore both areas must use and understand the same jargon, language, metrics and analytics, this will facilitate teamwork.
For example, it is essential that the team understands the conversion funnel , both sales and marketing , and the same concepts such as Top, Middle and Bottom of the funnel.
The objective of this practice is to convert the greatest number of opportunities into closed sales and new clients, being possible only through the pertinent information shared in a timely manner between the areas.
Another example of this is that marketing notifies by means of alerts when a sales prospect entered the website, and sales share the revenue that was generated from a specific campaign or strategy.
3. Have joint and closed-loop indicators
In order for the process to flow properly, it is essential to unify indicators and criteria between the areas, for example, in terms of lead management, it will be necessary to homogenize under which criteria a “qualified lead” is considered.
Only 1 in 2 companies claim that Marketing and Sales have a formal definition of a qualified lead (Marketing Charts).
In this way, marketing can commit to delivering qualified leads under the common criteria, while sales can give them a more efficient follow-up to convert them into customers.
Also, it allows improving the performance of both departments by facilitating the analysis of which marketing sources produce the most customers, or to understand how each piece of content that is created adds to closing customers.
