Smarketing: Aligning Your Sales and Marketing Teams
The sales and marketing teams at many companies tend to butt heads. According to HubSpot, 87% of the terms sales and marketing use to describe each other are negative. But if both teams are working toward the same goal – that is increasing revenue – then shouldnt they be more aligned?
Research suggests that when sales and marketing are working together, companies tend to see a 20% annual growth, while companies where sales and marketing function separately experience a decline in growth.
HubSpot, one of the words most popular marketing automation companies, knew the importance of aligning their sales and marketing teams and even came up with a name to describe this alignment Smarketing. Smarketing is all about getting sales and marketing on the same page, so they can work together to achieve company goals.
Lets go over a few of the ways your business can start using Smarketing to achieve growth.
Speak the Same Language
To begin with, the sales and marketing teams need to be using the same vocabulary.
Sales is accustomed to working with a number that must be hit each month. If marketing wants to work with them to meet revenue goals, they also should sign up for a number, such as the amount of leads needed for that month.
Coming up with a number for the marketing team isn’t hard, you simply need to determine how many leads it takes to hit your companys revenue goal. Based on the companys closing ratio, you can determine how many leads marketing will need to deliver.
You will also have to agree on what qualifies as a sales ready lead.
Many times marketing complains about sales not working their leads, and sales accuses marketing of not sending them good leads. Making sure everyone knows what qualifies as a sales ready lead helps to avoid this problem.
Set Up Closed-Loop Reporting
Another item to take care of is to set up closed-loop reporting. This process not only prevents duplicate leads, but also allows you to pass over relevant information and get helpful feedback on your collaborative efforts.
Both teams benefit from this process.
Marketing gains more updates around leads, so they can better target their efforts to meet each prospects needs.
Additionally, sales gets better intelligence that will make them more effective at their jobs by allowing them to know the right approach to take when reaching out to potential customers.
Maintain Open Communication
To keep the lines of communication open you should hold weekly marketing meetings. Choose one person from each team to present at the meeting. Some of the topics to discuss include:
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Accomplishments
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New product features
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Updates on metric tracking
Also, its ideal for the sales and marketing teams to get out of their silos and sit together. That way sales can ask questions when needed and tell success stories to motivate the team.
Rely On Data
Finally, make sure to keep in touch with the data. This will enable each team to prove their worth.
Marketing can show lead generation tracked against goals and by source. Sales, on the other hand, can show sales by day, sales activity, and depth of leads worked.
To ensure success, use a dashboard to stay on top of what is going on between the teams.
Start Getting Your Sales and Marketing Teams on the Same Page
There are various tools available to help you align your sales and marketing efforts, but one of the greatest is HubsSpot. Its what we use here a Horton Group, and we highly recommend it for your business.
Moreover, with the recent launch of HubSpots new CRM, aligning sales and marketing is easier than ever.
If you would like to learn more about how to get sales and marketing working together to grow your business, give Horton Group a call today at (615) 292-8642. Our inbound marketing professionals would be delighted to help you out.