Want to Sell More? Boost the Relationship Between Sales and Marketing

5 minute read

Upland Admin

The relationship between sales and marketing in B2B organizations is a powerful dynamic to manage. When it works, it’s great and the funnel is full. If things are “rocky,” it’s harder to move towards common sales goals.

Instead of focusing on the good or bad, put energy into boosting how these teams can work together.

When the every team for itself mindset is at play, organizations lose out on the essential momentum needed in the long game to win over B2B customers. They also lose out on easy ways to target customer needs clearly.

However, by calling on the sales teams’ insight and intimate knowledge of the customer, B2B marketers can target pain points and craft marketing campaigns that get people to take notice while meeting specific needs.

Related Content: Sales and Marketing Alignment: Keep Your Eyes on Revenue 

This is why marketing absolutely needs customer intelligence input from the sales team.  Combined efforts between sales and marketing shape stronger messaging and zero in on customer desires. This can result in positive feedback about the brand online, lend to the development of “smarter content” for marketing campaigns and improve sales numbers.

The Combined Power of Sales and Marketing Generates More Intelligent Content

The best part about finding ways to improve the relationship between sales and marketing is that efforts result in more intelligent content in every way.

Why?

Customers will feel heard. Combine that bonus with time saving efforts of information sharing and the enhanced ability to create marketing campaigns on target with specific, realistic pain points for the customer – and you strike gold.

To support sales and marketing alignment, it’s time to look at specific ways to tap into the rich bed of information from customer interactions in order to help everyone sell more.

Here are five revealing questions to help B2B organizations enhance marketing and support a stronger relationship between sales and marketing.

1. Are you speaking the same language?

This seems like a no-brainer, but it’s easy for individual teams to develop their own language. When one team tries to collaborate with another, you may discover terms or metrics that represent the same data, but are delineated by different terminology. Do yourself a favor. Map the buyer’s journey by asking for company-wide input from all teams, then standardize it. A clear path to purchase and standardized definitions clarify communication between teams and contribute to more effective overall marketing. Also be sure to implement a standard set of metrics and associated terms. This way sales and marketing are using the same scale to measure important data.

Related Content: Why Is Sales Ignoring Your Content? Address the Elephant in the Room

 

2. How can you map content to sales leads and prospects by effectively using customer feedback?

When a customer starts out on the buyer’s journey, they can go at any pace and enter the journey at any key point. To help customers along their purchase path effectively, it helps to know what specific content gets them to take a next step. Calling on the expertise of the sales team and their intimate knowledge of the customer can completely transform the power of marketing content, so find a regular, mindful way to collaborate. Make it easy for the sales team to take notes on customer calls and put them in a centralized database. Not only does an energy of collaboration save time, it provides a live tracking system of customer wins and pain points.

3. When was the last time you updated buyer personas? Did the sales team provide input?

Effectively using buyer personas goes way beyond using them as a tool for marketing campaigns. When you pull in insights from sales to “flesh out” buyer personas, you create a much more accurate and nuanced picture of a typical buyer. Sales teams understand customer habits likes and dislikes, as well as what language they use to delay making a purchase decision. In addition, more full-bodied personas help everyone focus energy on leads with the most potential.

4. Is demand generation working? Are sales leads moving through the funnel towards an action step?

Demand generation can span a pretty huge umbrella of marketing efforts in order to get customers excited about offerings. Without input from sales teams, it’s hard to pinpoint what efforts are getting the most traction, or how to move leads through the funnel to the next action step. Collaborate with sales teams to track information from different marketing campaigns through sales call notes, then select the best way to share that information each week.

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5. Are there clear, established, shared goals between marketing and sales?

One of the best ways to improve or strengthen the relationship between sales and marketing is to create shared goals between teams. When both teams are committed to reaching the same goals, it takes service and dedication to a new level. Mutual accountability can be a game changer and help individuals feel more connected to contributing their unique skills to succeed as a team.

These are just some ways to dive into the relationship between sales and marketing and enhance it on various levels. Collaboration, when done with the right mindset and clear goals, truly improves workflow and the buyer’s journey, while also aligning marketing and sales in very powerful ways.

If your organization is ready to foster better sales and marketing alignment, start by getting clear on ways to establish or grow the relationship between the marketing and sales teams. When you do it right, this win-win win dynamic contributes to everyone selling more!

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