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- Categories: Industrial Marketing, Leads and Lead Generation
Does your right hand know what the left is doing?
The divide between sales and marketing is pretty standard in technical industries now-a-days but can seriously harm your customer relationships and overall company development and growth.
In most companies marketing is off doing their job and the sales team is off doing theirs and neither has a clue what the other is doing. Each has their specific goals, responsibilities, and activities but companies tend not to see that ultimately they are the same – attracting and retaining customers to boost revenue.
Companies with integrated sales and marketing teams simply perform better and out-sell their competitors who don’t. According to Marketo’s recent marketing-sales alignment study:
- 67% higher probability that marketing-generated leads will close
- 108% better lead acceptance rate among leads provided by Marketing to Sales
- 209% stronger contribution to revenue from marketing-generated leads
How does properly aligning your sales and marketing teams help your business? Here are the 4 areas to focus on to align your teams:
- Ideal Customer. Everyone needs to be clear on who your “ideal customer” is. Once your company has agreed upon, defined, and documented what an ideal customer or account would be for the company the sales and marketing team can get to work zeroing in on those ideal people and building the relationships. If each department has a different idea of who the “ideal” is then the leads generated by each team will either be ignored or a struggle to purse and close the deal on.
- Consistent Messages. Having your marketing and sales teams regularly communicating helps keep everyone delivering the same company message. If you asked each team in your company, right now, what the company did, for whom, and what problems your product or service solves – how closely do you think their answers would be to one another? Delivering a consistent message to your customers through all communication channels – website, advertising, social media, print materials, phone conversations, and more – is key to gaining the trust and delivering the best value to your clients.
- Shared Goals. Integrating marketing with sales means that gaining customers and increasing revenue is a joint responsibility for both teams. Marketing is motivated to bring in qualified leads and opportunities but they need the sales team to close the deal.
- Clear Responsibilities. Marketing’s job is to create visually appealing and compelling messages that capture and hold attention to generate leads – then it is up to the sales team to better develop those leads and close the deal. Who will qualify the leads? What is the message being used? How is it being delivered to potential customers? Who is responsible for measuring and reporting? Well aligned sales and marketing teams make sure that each team knows who is responsible for what so nothing is left ambiguous and no toes are stepped on.
- Communication. Proper and on-going communication is one of the most important skills to develop in any business or industry; positively sharing ideas, gaining feedback, changing strategies, discussing responsibilities, and more. Sounds good, right? But, how can you get everyone on the same page and keep them there?
It’s meeting time!
One of the best ways to keep people on track and pursing the same goals is to regularly make sure they are doing just that. Setup a monthly sales and marketing meeting – either in person or utilizing online meeting tools. The key here is consistent open dialog on a regular basis. The meeting doesn’t have to be long but it should cover a few key points:
- Closed Deals. Take a few minutes to go over deals that closed or failed to close the prior month. What worked? What didn’t work? Are the un-closed deals still on the table? What would help to close it?
- New Leads. Next go over new opportunities that each team has found. One team may think they have a hot lead but the other isn’t so sure. What has been done to engage these opportunities so far?
- Changes Needed. Are there any changes that need to be made to the lead generation or development strategies? What area needs more attention? What area needs less?
- Responsibilities. Last it is a good idea to go over what, specifically, each team should focus on over the next month. What goals do you want to see achieved? What support does each team need to meet their goals?
The bottom line is this – good communication builds a better business. Bringing your marketing and sales team together on a regular basis to open communication channels will do wonders for your bottom line.
Need assistance? Let us help!
With over 30 years of experience, The Rico Group specializes in helping industrial manufacturers and job shops grow their business and diversify their customer base. We know how engineers think and what they are looking for. We know your processes, equipment, and materials. We also know that you have very little time to take away from your production and getting your customer’s orders delivered.
Grow your business with better marketing with The Rico Group.
www.thericogroup.com
(805) 497-7401