They may look the same to the naked eye, but sales and marketing are different from each other. Marketing strategy generates revenue by ensuring that customers are aware of the features and benefits of the products. On the other hand, sales utilize the data to create meaningful insights and generate revenue. These insights help the marketing team to target potential customers and areas as well as promote the brand.
It is helpful for both the departments only when they come together under one roof and communicate frequently. Neither department can meet their targets by working as two individual teams. If you want to generate more revenues per quarter, you must implement a strategy that closes the gap between these two teams.
Marketers set up to exploit technology in the web 2.0 era are having better success because they can facilitate social media administration, handle customer data concerning privacy, and increase efficiencies in managing and deploying content globally.
To accomplish this, CMOs and CIOs must collaborate to co-create new cross-functional organizations and procedures in which both teams share ownership of goals and business outcomes. In the case of social media platforms, this is exceptionally valid. As new apps appear on social networking sites like LinkedIn and Telegram, the difficulty of controlling risk, satisfying regulatory standards, and collecting and deriving insights from these rich new data sources grows.
This article will give you some meaningful insights into how an organization may get these departments to work together effectively.
How Marketing and Sales Professionals May Collaborate to Create Efficient Workflows
✅ Risk Reduction
When conducting campaigns via social media, technology can improve operations and eliminate risks that multinational organizations face. It is only possible if the sales team is aware of the requirements, like multifactor authentication for social media platforms and accounts, a workflow concept that notifies the appropriate team members when a task is awaiting approval, and industry and country/regional compliance.
✅ Data Management Responsibly
The current social ecosystem has brought a plethora of information and metadata that offers both opportunities and challenges. Marketing may use sales to monitor the relevant data to obtain meaningful insights, such as analyzing and assessing campaigns side-by-side to see what works and what does not. Furthermore, sales can create controls that keep data secure while respecting user privacy.
✅ Content Deployment That Works
The ideal blend of creativity, punctuality, and engagement is what marketing is all about. Marketing requires a common platform to handle, host, and promote all marketing assets and content. This approach ensures that campaigns and messaging are consistent and interrelated. Marketers will not have to reinvent the wheel and will be able to generate their own messaging. It will bring innovation while reducing redundancy and speeding up the creative process.
16 Ways To Bring Sales And Marketing Departments Together
- Define Success for Both Parties
An excellent first step is to clearly define what success means to both departments (i.e., not allowing one department to dictate the success of the other). Although PR and certain advertisements are more challenging to manage yet crucial to promoting products, you must refine the social media platforms to attract and grab sales. In the end, it all comes down to efficient communication and the alignment of key performance indicators (KPIs).
- Implement Business Operating System for Entrepreneurs
Communication is at the heart of everything. You must use a system like the Business Operating System for Entrepreneurs. They give a splendid solution with 10-level meetings. The Level 10 Meeting incorporates the psychology of what makes for good weekly meetings, forcing you to focus on and solve the most crucial issues as they arise.
- Leverage Discussion Format That is Structured
Use a structured conversation framework that ensures sales and marketing talk about what they both need to succeed. NGT (Nominal Group Technique) aids in eliciting other members’ thoughts and resulting in a shared set of priorities. Loudmouths are discouraged from dominating the discourse, and introverts are encouraged to participate.
- Follow Your Development
After aligning the goals of the sales and marketing team, it is time to track progress. However, you will need to build a system to do so. When one of your teams begins a new project, use an Agile Development approach and set benchmarks to demonstrate that you provide value along the way. Delivering value early and often is the efficient way to ensure that your team efforts (and budget) are supported from start to finish.
- Stay in Touch
CIO and CMO should always stay in contact even after the project they were working upon is delivered. Each organization has a plethora of data. Both sales and marketing teams should consume these data to extract meaningful insights that can help to target potential customers. They can guide and help each other better when they communicate frequently.
Therefore, you must not shy away from scheduling meetings weekly. You may also schedule brainstorming sessions where team members can discuss new ideas or propose a solution to an issue they’re working on. CIO and CMO can also organize team-bonding workshops to increase the engagement of the team members.
- Organize Them Around a Single Leader
CIO and CMO can close the gap between these two teams by bringing all the stakeholders under one roof. This architecture provides a clear line of sight across G2M strategies, the ability to reuse customer victories and accomplishments, and a common point of truth for tracking lead development cycles from generation to close.
- Interview Sales Representatives Regularly
Interviewing sales staff might identify consumer concerns, objections, and hot buttons that can be tested in campaigns instead of talking to customers. Simply asking acknowledges the salesperson’s knowledge, which is a smart first step toward closing the gap. Additionally, providing assets that sales can use to clinch deals shows that both the teams are on the same page.
- Align Expectations and Progress Paths
Creating a single plan and method where both teams may communicate their new expectations and paths of progress is an excellent way to develop a bridge between sales and marketing. Make it a goal to improve collaboration to achieve maximum performance in this “new normal”.
- Organize Weekly Meetings
It is impossible to overestimate the importance of the sales and marketing divisions working together. The marketing department’s campaigns would be worthless if they didn’t include salespeople’s advice. The most effective method for teams to get on the same page is to meet once a week. Setting targets for marketing teams also ensure that sales teams receive the information they need to succeed.
- Stop Blaming Others
Stop pointing fingers. Too many businesses purposefully or inadvertently set marketing and sales against one another. Sales blame marketing for not providing more or better leads, while marketing blames sales for failing to act on or close leads. Agencies must assist their clients in understanding the value of a win-win strategy in which sales, marketing, and the agency all win or lose together.
- Use an ABM (Account-Based Marketing)
Account-based marketing is an excellent technique for marketers to overcome the marketing and sales divide. Marketers create targeted marketing efforts that produce revenue by collaborating with sales teams to identify and prioritize customers, contacts, and key messages. Sales teams feel supported with a strategy they believe.
- Use Tools that are Appropriate for Both Teams
The gap between your sales and marketing divisions will widen if they aren’t using the same technology. Rather than seeking separate marketing and sales tools, try to identify technology that can suit both needs. Fostering collaboration and understanding of each team’s responsibilities improves interdepartmental integration.
- Conduct Monthly Team Challenges
Holding regular challenges inside the company will aid in bridging the marketing and sales divide. Divide your team into groups of four or five with members from both teams. Assign one project/campaign to collaborate and work on as a team. It will assist in creating unity between stakeholders and explore your agency’s outcomes. This approach, in turn, will enable your teams to flourish together.
- Take a Look at Some Hybrid Team Designs
A massive problem necessitates a systemic response. Close the gap by experimenting with hybrid team designs in which sales and marketing experts sit in the same place, working together to reach revenue goals – with equal participation and compensation structures. Do you think it is insane? Take a glance at the DevOps initiatives in the developer community.
- Leverage Customer Behavior Data
Discovering customer behavior data is a common language for sales and marketing. To follow the actual online behaviors of their customers and competitors, CIOs and CMOs must utilize an AI data analytics platform. Discover the subjects that drive lead conversation to create marketing campaigns and build sales strategies that are easy to measure and alter.
- Taking Use of the Digital Potential
Despite their divergent perspectives on many issues, CMOs and CIOs agree that reaching and engaging the market has become increasingly technology-driven, with technology underpinning and driving the entire customer experience.
They must collaborate to educate and bring their C-suite counterparts along the digital integration path. “A holistic approach to digital involves 100 percent platform involvement across all LOBs to create a consistent experience,” said a vice president of IT at a US bank.
Final Thoughts
Each business is a digital business, and this is not an exaggeration. Technology, data, analytics, and design can shape the customer service experience. Not only is information technology widespread, but it is also quickly becoming a key driver of market differentiation, business growth, and profitability. As a result, chief marketing officers (CMOs) and chief information officers (CIOs) will need to collaborate more closely than before. Customer expectations for relevant experiences have the longest-term impact on the marketing strategy for CMOS.
CIOs and CMOs must collaborate toward common goals, celebrate group victories, and maintain open lines of communication to drive business success. Shared sales and marketing objectives should be some of your top priorities as a CIO, whether you’re aiming to attract, keep, or personally flourish.
Tags: CIO, CMO, Marketing, Marketing strategy