Let’s be honest — marketing and sales teams usually don’t get along.

“I’m frustrated by the quality of the leads,” says the sales rep. “You don’t follow our strategy,” replies the marketing manager.

Despite the fact that they are both pursuing the same goal, different perspectives on the selling process get in the way.

It often happens that while the marketing team is pursuing a certain Ideal Customer, the sales reps are chasing those that they know will convert.

This just means that the efforts are scattered, and therefore less effective.

Imagine what kind of things you could achieve if there was a way to work together!

And there is! Here are just simple 5 things how your marketing can do to help you sell more.

1. Go after the same target.

What’s the point of wasting your time and resources on 2 different groups of people?

Develop the same Ideal Buyer Persona and make sure you are both targeting the same audience.

Marketers can help you narrow down this persona up to specifics — location, company, position, industry, key pain points and key demands.

The sales reps then just take the existing list of relevant prospects and already know the most important info about them and can tailor their selling to their specific needs.

That way, while the potential client is being surrounded by effective marketing messaging, the sales reps are already contacting them directly which increases chances of a successful conversion.

2. Communicate, communicate, communicate.

Yes, sometimes intra-department meetings can be a chore and a waste of time, but it doesn’t mean it won’t contribute to both your strategies.

While marketers can be extremely skilled at their niche, they still won’t know the nitty-gritty details of getting someone to sign the contract.

So, it’s the sales team’s job to help them understand.

What’s your sales team hearing every day? What kind of problems do they run into? What’s the most common response they are getting during sales calls?

Similarly, your sales might not know the motivation behind some marketing decisions.

Why does our message sound like this? What’s the core value of the product? Which channel is the most effective in reaching out to potential clients?

It’s important to establish a good communication flow so that your teams can easily exchange helpful ideas and also air out their frustrations (that also plays a role!)

3. Offer clear and easy-to-digest messaging

Frankly, it’s not the sales’ job to think of the most effective wording for the Unique Sales Proposition.

Articulating your product’s main features and benefits falls on marketing shoulders. Marketers will have your messaging nailed down — from the copy on the website, to brand colours and slogans.

The question is, how well are the sales able to articulate the message?

If your sales team is struggling to convey the main points in an effective way, let the marketing team help out.

Marketers can create easily digestible and consistent bullet points for the sales team to work with.

Once that message is driven down to more niche areas like industry trends, who you are, what you do and offer, and who we serve, sales might use that messaging for everyday communications with customers and prospects, without having to reinvent the wheel every time.

4. Share your toys

This point goes hand-in-hand with the rest of marketing at your organisation.

There’s no better excuse for a sales rep to reach out to a prospect than to come armed with a great message in a slick, well-branded package.

A sale is not only done by the sheer power of voice and persuasion skills of your sales reps. Consistent, professional-looking and concise materials can be extremely beneficial during sales calls.

Prospect is asking for a case study? Or an analytics report? Or they might be interested in an ebook?

Marketing will share all of these materials and more.

A single sales presentation might not do it for some prospects, especially those you’ve been chasing for some time. Marketing then can provide a presentation template that the sales reps can change depending on the call.

Neat, right?

5. Create a standard process

There’s that word again — communication.

In order for your efforts to now be simply wasted, it’s necessary to create a standard hand-off process.

At which stage of the marketing funnel does the sales rep come in? What kind of message the prospect has already been exposed to? What stage of the buyer journey are they in?

All these questions need to be agreed beforehand.

It’s also important to agree on what qualifies a lead. Much of the frustration between departments comes from this simple misunderstanding.

Help your marketing work backwards from the sales goal to determine the marketing acquisition target, so that then sales would know what to expect.

This way, the sales rep is not going into the call blind speaking to a barely warm lead.

If the potential buyer has been in the funnel for some time, they are well past the consideration stage and will be much easier to convert.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, both sales and marketing are in it for the same thing — growth and prosperity of the company, so it just makes sense for them to work together in a true ABM manner.

Customer acquisition doesn’t have to fall solely on sales shoulders — marketing can be right alongside them in that battle.

If you are curious about uniting your sales and marketing efforts, but not sure how to start, the lovely people in our UMG team would be happy to look at your processes and do a full no-string-attached marketing audit and suggest an actionable plan. Speak to a member of our team here.

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