Most people outside of an organization think of sales and marketing as being one and the same thing. But people inside the organization know better: sales and marketing are completely different departments, and typically have a hard time working together. The marketing team often accuses the sales team of dropping the ball on key leads, while the sales team accuses marketing of handing off a lot of less-than-stellar leads.
If a company is doing well in terms of revenue, these tensions may lurk under the surface and never really become visible. However, it’s when a company is not doing so well in the sales department that the tensions may come out into the open. So it’s better to get B2B marketing and sales working together sooner rather than later.
The big picture is that if B2B marketing and sales can work together, that could be enough to boost sales by 20 percent. The entire marketing process becomes easier and more streamlined, and the entire sales process becomes easier and more streamlined. Sounds simple, but how does that really work?
There are three keys to getting B2B marketing and sales teams to work together. It all starts by getting marketing and sales on the same page. They need to agree on the final end goals, and they need to agree on the strategy for getting there. Here’s what needs to happen:
#1: Get marketing and sales to agree on revenue goals
Revenue is the key. Once you’ve got revenue worked out, it’s relatively easy to work backwards and figure out how hard marketing has to work to make that final goal reachable. As a rule of thumb, you can take the final revenue goal, divide by the size of the average deal or contract, and get the number of final customers. But not every prospect becomes a customer, so you also have to account for the conversion rate. If you only convert 1 in every 100 prospects, then you’ll need 100 leads for every final sale.
One way to get goal alignment between the two teams is to use a software solution like Goalscape, which is a visual online tool for tracking goals. It helps to break down complex challenges into specific goals and priorities.
#2: Get marketing and sales to agree on what makes a good lead
Marketing is really good at creating leads, but there’s a big difference between a regular, garden-variety lead and a “hot” lead. A hot lead is one that matches up nicely with one of your company’s typical buyer personas AND – here’s the important point – this prospect is also a motivated buyer. There’s no more need to prime the pump here – you can just hand this lad off to the sales team and watch them go to work.
#3: Develop a full 360-degree feedback loop
Just as sales complains about the types of leads they are getting, marketing complains about the lack of insight they get into why so many leads failed to pan out as planned. The key here is getting a feedback loop going. What’s working? What types of messages resonated the most with prospects? Once you know that, it’s easier to put together a better, more effective marketing strategy that hits on all the key points.
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That’s it – just three steps. Put those three building blocks together, and you could get ever close to that elusive 20 percent boost on revenue that happens when sales and marketing work together as a team.
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Dane
Dane Cobain is a published author, freelance writer, book blogger, poet and (occasional) musician from High Wycombe, UK. Before going freelance, he worked as a social media marker, now specialising in writing about publishing, technology and marketing.