This is the blog transcript of our video The Secret to Marketing and Sales Alignment. If you’d like to see more of our videos, you can subscribe to our YouTube channel here.
Aligning your sales and marketing efforts can be one of the most important things that you do in growing your business. It’s also one of the most challenging things that you can do.
Fortunately there are some secrets to making this easier. What are they?
One of the major benefits of using an unified platform like Mission Suite is creating an alignment between your sales and marketing efforts. Because of that, I’ve worked with a lot of clients in an effort to do that.
And, of course, I’ve seen how things were done wrong in the first place.
So here are some of the secrets that I’ve learned about how to align your sales and marketing efforts…the RIGHT way…
First things first, you need clear goals and plans.
Every good project starts with the end in mind. So know exactly what your goals are. And make sure that they are as specific as they can possibly be.
Do you want 10 leads per month? 20?
What do they need to look like? Do they need to be CEOs? Marketing Managers? IT Managers?
How do they need to be qualified? What information do you need to know to let you know that they’re qualified?
The more specific you can get, the better for everyone.
If we all know that we need 10 marketing managers every month who have marketing budgets of $25 thousand per year who have shown interest in a new website, that gives us a clear measure of success that we can plan for.
From there, we can create our plan on how we’re going to attract those marketing managers, how we’re going to get them interested, what we’re going to use to qualify them and how we’re going to transition them to a sales conversation.
Again, this needs to be hyper specific. If you think you’ve gotten “specific enough” but you don’t have all of your questions answered about how someone moves from a lead to a qualified lead to an opportunity to a closed sale then you haven’t gotten specific enough so keep going.
Next, make sure that there is clear visibility into both your marketing and your sales efforts.
I know that tracking might not be as exciting to everyone else as it is to me, but personally, I think that this is the fun part. And it’s probably one of the most important aspects of aligning your sales and marketing efforts.
You need to make sure that you have a clear understanding of everything that’s happening on both the sales and the marketing side of this revenue equation so that you can act and react the way you need to.
Make sure you have a pipeline that’s always up to date.
And make sure that every opportunity is tagged with the source the opportunity came from. This will help you make sure that you’re spending the time on your marketing efforts on the things that are actually producing sales opportunities.
I wrote up a blog article on lead tracking and opportunity tracking that’s worth checking out for more information on this. Check the description below for a link to the article.
Also, make sure that your sales CRM is getting the right information from your marketing channels.
What emails are being sent out that they’re clicking on? What content are the downloading from your website? All of these things can help you on the sales side to make sure that you’re clear on all of the emails, content, web visits, and whatever else they’ve done along the way that’s gotten them to the conversation they’re having now.
Hint – If you’re using a system like Mission Suite, all that is already connected so you can see it all together 😉
What are you using to track and manage your leads now? It’s ok if it’s not Mission Suite, but I want to know what you’re finding success with so let me know in the comments!
And lastly, feedback is everything.
Obviously if you’re doing this all yourself, the feedback can be pretty stark but it’s still important to get an honest understanding of what’s actually happening with your various efforts.
If the prospect that you’re talking to has answered all the right questions, seen all the right information and is still not working with you – are you dropping the ball in the sales process in some way?
Alternatively, if the leads you’re talking to are nowhere near qualified when you get on the phone with them – what do you need to be doing better with your marketing efforts to make sure that they’re actually the right person to talk to at the right time?
That kind of feedback is priceless on the sales side AND on the marketing side of the revenue equation so don’t be scared of it. Yeah, it can be hard to hear sometimes but if you want to grow, it’s important.
We created an infographic that shows you very simply what you need to focus on to create alignment in your sales and marketing efforts. Click here to download the infographic now!
I really hope you got something out of this and if you did, check out the video and give it a like and share so that other people can check it out too! Be sure to check out these videos for more on selling more effectively. And, of course, be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel and ring the bell to be notified whenever we post a new video!