Last week I was talking about how to deal with the issue of coming across as too sales-y in marketing content. So this week I want to give you three ways to bridge the gap between marketing and sales – a really important topic.
The challenge is that marketing and sales are often treated as completely separate business functions. When in fact, they need to be closely aligned and work together to have the best impact on the business as a whole.
Often in larger organisations, the tension between marketing and sales is palpable, because they don’t communicate properly and/or respect each other.
Here are three ways you can bridge the gap between marketing and sales in your business:
1.Close the feedback loop
This is one of the biggest challenges with getting marketing and sales to work effectively together, particularly if you have different people responsible for these areas. You’ll have big problems if your marketing person is creating content without first hearing back from your salesperson about the conversations they’re having with prospects.
Even if you’re flying solo, make sure you’re aligning the information you’re hearing in your sales conversations and with your prospective customers to the marketing you’re creating.
A really good place to start is to use the frequently asked questions you get from your prospects to inform your marketing content. This way, you’ll be able to present a consistent brand both across your channels and when you’re making sales.
2. Build relationships between marketing and sales
If you have different people doing your marketing and sales, it’s so important that they have a good working relationship with each other. Marketing and sales work best as a team rather than competing to hit targets (which is what actually tends to happen).
Focus on ensuring there’s good communication between marketing and sales and you’ll find it a lot easier to convert a prospect from a lead into a client.
3. Treat both functions with respect
Don’t prioritise one function over the other. And be very clear on the processes for both marketing and sales. It’s important to separate out different responsibilities within the customer journey and be clear on which stages are owned by marketing and which ones are owned by sales.
Some business owners try doing only sales, then they don’t get very good results so try switching to only doing marketing instead. And guess what? That doesn’t work either.
They need to work together for marketing to get high-quality prospects into your sales pipeline ready for you to convert through your sales process.
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