Getting Marketing and Sales to work together

Modern cloud-based tools that encourage cooperation between Sales and Marketing instead of competition can help transform your results. They're also affordable and readily available.

Business owners and managers like to complain about their Marketing and Sales teams not working together, but what they don't recognize is that they've often set up the very circumstances that create the usual problems.

With most businesses, Marketing is evaluated based on the number of leads they send to Sales, and Sales is evaluated based on how many deals they close.

This creates inherent problems that damage the relationship between the two teams as well as the company as a whole.

Think about it: if a marketer needs to send as many leads as possible to Sales, not only might they push through leads that shouldn't be, but they may also resort to driving numbers in ways that damage the company's reputation. (note: I'm not implying that all problems are from the marketing side, just using this as an example)

I can give you two examples right off the bat; they just happen to be from LinkedIn but that's coincidental:

1. Amost every “Business Development” person on LinkedIn that asks me to connect turns right around and starts hitting me up for an appointment to talk, without even trying to interact beforehand.
2. I'll get connection requests from someone with an American-sounding name who claims to be in a place like Seattle or NYC, and if I investigate I'll find they're often actually in another country, using a pseudonym and fake or virtual office address to try to appeal to American business owners.

I'm willing to bet that these guys are working against an arbitrary goal that they have to meet, though, so it's hard to blame them for doing just about anything to get the numbers.

Modern marketing automation systems are great tools for encouraging cooperation between Sales and Marketing instead of competition.

• Marketing provides the content for nurturing leads.
• Marketing can see what campaigns are working, and use that information to concentrate on what's working and ditch what isn't.
• The ability to personalize website and email content to each visitor based on their own behavior helps create higher quality leads for Sales.
• Sales can track and manage those leads at various stages until the sale is closed.
• Lead scoring can trigger an email or text message to Sales when a lead reaches a certain score.

Live data from your automation system lets both Marketing and Sales stop guessing at what's going on and helps them work together for the best results.

Even though sales still translate into numbers, you should stop thinking of them as a “numbers game” as in the past.

Technologies available today turn the numbers game upside down by helping people who are good matches for you prequalify themselves before ever coming into contact with Sales.

Help more interested people find you, and you need fewer prospects.

Take a moment to think about this:

You're better off with ONE website visitor who is a great match for you than you are with ONE THOUSAND visitors who aren't good matches.

All it takes is that one perfect lead to become a lifelong client, but if you're shotgun-blasting everyone it's doubtful you'll find them.

Stop spamming people or trying to lure tons of visitors to your site through email blasts, misleading ads, or clickbait. Start spending a bit of time figuring out just who you're looking for and then craft a message that talks specifically to them.

I think you'll be amazed at the difference in closing rates, happy customers, and Marketing and Sales who are on the same team.

Check out our free resources for info like a 10-point checklist to increase leads on your website and 9 free easy-to-use tools to create lead magnets. Let us know in the comments below if they help!

We also offer a Website Audit where, for less than $500, both our CEO and VP of Creative Services will personally review your website with you, recommending things you can do right away to improve it to help get better visitors and generate more leads. And if you book a project with us (like site redesign, Roadmapping, Automated Marketing) within 1 month of your Website Audit, we'll even apply your Audit fee to the project price!