4 Quick Tips for Sales and Marketing Alignment

Historically, the marketing and sales departments of a firm have often been “at war.” After all, while both departments have the same ultimate goal, their means of arriving at that point may differ dramatically. Luckily, today’s marketing and sales methods have made it a little easier to align these teams and help set any company on the path to success. We’ve gathered four tips that will help you on your quest for sales and marketing alignment.

1. Meet Regularly – It can be difficult, but holding meetings that both teams attend is often the first and most important step towards alignment. Consider a virtual meeting or video conference if necessary—the goal is to simply allow each person to speak his or her piece and make sure that everyone starts out and remains on the same page.
2. Involve Everyone – Marketing today includes concepts such as content creation and social media outreach. In reality, your sales team members can be an extremely useful resource as you engage in these activities. After all, your salespeople are the ones who are interacting directly with your customers on a day-to-day basis. If everyone helps create this content, there will be a better overall agreement and ultimately success.
3. Highlight Your Sales Team – As you’re creating content, you may want to utilize your blog or social media accounts as a method of giving your sales team a boost. Perhaps content can be ghostwritten under a salesperson’s name, or you can get your sales team onto the social media sites themselves to interact with your customers.
4. Let the Marketers Listen in on Sales Calls – One last simple way to improve the marketing team’s understanding of the sales process is to let the marketers spend some time listening in on sales calls. Once the marketers have seen or heard exactly what the sales team deals with on a daily basis, it will make for better-rounded content that serves everyone involved in the process.

As you can see, aligning these two departments is not as difficult as it may seem. Called “smarketing,” getting the hang of this can help as you grow your business and work to connect with more customers through every step of the marketing and sales cycle. The effort you put into this today could pay off in increased revenue for years to come.