When you are working on driving revenue growth, your efforts to bring your marketing and sales closer together has never been more essential.

In almost every organization, there is a gap between the sales and marketing departments.

The first accuses the other of not providing enough qualified leads and the other accuses the first of not providing enough concise information on existing customers and on the various contacts established.

But how do you unite the two on common growth objectives?

lead generation

Here is a good starting point to establish some ground for to bring your team to work closer together.

With these five points, you can create a sense of collaboration in order to maximize their activities, efforts and efficiencies.

1. Share data across functions 

You need to centralize all data in one platform.

Each function will have access to the same data.

Adding this data to a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software and a Marketing Automation Platform (MAP) will allow sales to track marketing activities and marketing to gather details relevant to every contact, lead and account gathered by representatives to personalize the buying experience.

Together, it will be much easier to find effective modes of conversion and to cooperate on lead generation, conversion and customer nurturing:

Make sure to capture all your leads' data

Marketing

  • Analyze contact and company data
  • Structure targeted campaigns (email promotions, web campaigns)
  • Plan company-sponsored events (events, trade shows, webinars)

Sales

  • Collect information on every lead and contact to avoid losing them (name, contact information, affiliated company, valuable insight on social networks)
  • Add company personalized information on every contact to better understand and qualify the opportunity (contact’s pains and challenges, current systems he uses)
  • Keep track of the follow-ups with each contact

2. Create Personas 

In this particular case, personas will help marketing and sales embody the typical profile of a person taken from a group of contacts.

bring your marketing and sales closerThe creation of personas will pass through three main stages: research, analysis and modelling.

Since marketing has access to numerous relevant data and representatives possess field experience, together, they are the perfect team for this task. 

By working together, the sales and marketing team will be able to develop personas to be used in all their activities. 

bring your marketing and sales closer

3. Build an interdependent marketing and sales funnel

Once personas are generated, it is important to establish an interdependent marketing and sales cycles.

The marketing and sales funnel is an essential tool in accompanying a contact through his buying journey.

lead generation

It allows you to have an overview of where your activities are working well or not, and identify what it takes in each step of the cycle.

Avoid making the mistake and separating the marketing from the sales funnel.

The entire process is connected.

A well-managed marketing and sales funnel will help you organize all your efforts and monitor your results.

If your team does not have enough contacts in the first stage of the funnel, this is a sign that you will need to add new leads in order to meet your numbers.

Related : How to excel at quality lead generation?

4. Implement a Lead Scoring system

Lead scoring consists of branding a lead in quantitative terms by the attribution of a rating.

lead generation

This rating is calculated from the personal information collected on a contact and her actions.

For example, position held within the company, size of the company, social networks engagement, event participation, existing products and services, etc.

The result obtained will help classify contacts and leads based on their degree of maturity in the buying process.

Related: How to qualify leads at events? an approach by successful field marketers

Therefore, it will be easier to determine the “hot contacts” that need your immediate attention.

Note that the “value” of each contact varies from one company to another, even from a product to another.

It is generally characterized by the interest shown for the company or its status in the buying cycle.

Event lead data management

5. Learn and act accordingly

Once everything is in place, it is vital to monitor your performance so you can learn from your data in order for you to fine tune, persevere or pivot.

The use of periodic reports is key and ask yourself these questions:

  • Did we meet our revenue goals this quarter?
  • Should we evaluate our sales targets for certain products or services?
  • Is the sales potential for each segment realistically evaluated?
  • How did our marketing and sales contribute to achieving our objectives?

You can customize and generate reports from your centralized system.

You must examine all information within your reach to maximize your potential.

You can choose to have daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly reports.

It all depends on how you want to monitor, manage and control your progress.

Assessing the profitability of investments (sales actions and marketing campaigns) optimizes investments and focuses on the most profitable actions.

Moreover, it is fundamental that sales and marketing receive the same reports so they may work in symbiosis.

bring your marketing and sales closer

It is by encouraging your departments to work together that you will be able to reach your goals and stop the bickering that’s losing you precious time!

Centralizing the information of every contact is a step that should not be neglected in your organization.

Sharing this information will encourage collaboration between your teams and improve your performance.

In addition, the use of personas and a buying journey funnel will allow teams to remain focused on the needs and incentives of contacts as well as sales goals.

Add to this a lead scoring system and your team will prioritize the contacts most likely to end up with a sale.

If you’re looking for continuous improvement, it is advisable to repeat this exercise at least twice a year to ensure the efficiency of your process and the collaboration of your departments

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