Nowadays it's almost impossible -- and certainly not recommended -- to keep your marketing process and sales process separate. In this blog we'll explain why aligning your marketing and sales team is so important and outline what steps you can take.
Just a few years ago, it was normal for marketing and sales team to be unaligned and rarely communicate with each other. It's always been better to keep them on the same page, but it was never a requirement up til now.
The reason marketing and sales alignment is now so important is because of the role of data and analytics. Both teams should base their strategies off of sound data, and that data should be the same or at least have similar conclusions.
This all plays a role in the customer experience. According to a recent Business 2 Community article, the better aligned marketing and sales teams are, the more consistent the customer experience is:
"Your Marketing and Sales groups need to update their internally-focused processes and focus on the needs of the Buyer throughout their online/offline/online purchasing journey. The company needs to have one, and only one, perspective of the buyer that all functions/groups (including Product Management, Customer Service and Finance) can embrace and deliver a consistent customer experience."
So if aligning your marketing and sales teams is so important, what steps can you take to make this a reality? It all starts with the data and analytics we mentioned earlier.
Your focus should be on gathering and extracting data from dealings with clients. The more data you collect, the more insight you'll get into your target audience's behavior, preferences, and wants.
Once you have this information, you can plan your marketing and sales strategies around it. As a result, you'll automatically align your two teams. Using applications like ACT!, Zoho, or Hubspot can point you in the right direction in getting started.
To talk more about your marketing process, or anything else, please contact us. Thanks.
