There has always been a love-hate relationship between sales and marketing departments; despite being the two most significant business units, creating demand, generating revenue and, gaining commercial advantage.
Internal communication (alignment) is the most prominent reason for the ‘feud’ that we see throughout commercial operations, whether we are talking about an ambitious SMR, or a blue chip national, this mentality seems to be consistent.
It’s always a challenge for marketing teams to command the respect of the salespeople in the company. From what we have seen, this is usually because the sales people are driven towards the end result – a sale.
How Sales and Marketing Differ
By understand the different skills and priorities of sales and marketing divisions; we can close the gap and ultimately ensure business growth.
It’s the job of the marketing team/division - to understand buyer personas — and communicate in an outbound methodology. Typically these ‘prospects’ are not yet ready to have a sales discussion – and instead, marketing techniques work to capture their attention and drive into the sales process.
The content generated by the marketing teams; social media, blogs, infographics, e-books, webinars, email marketing campaigns etc. — works to influence buyers towards your products and services in a soft-strategy approach.
In stark contrast; the role of sales people is to stimulate one buyer at a time when the buyer is at the maximum point of engagement – adding a driven framework to the company's proposition.
The customer journey always includes both aspects of sales and marketing and working together fulfils the buying process.
Closing the Gap
It’s important that organisations take the time to see the value in both divisions and creates an internal culture where one respects the other for maximum benefit of the organisation.
The most effective organisations that we work with are ones that both value and understand the importance of alignment from both divisions – ones that demonstrate the impact from the buyer journey through to the sales conversion.
By Claire Curzon, Managing Director of Brighter Directions, a multi-award-winning outsourced marketing agency, specialising in expert marketing provision of PR & Media communications, Social Media, Email Marketing and more – on either long-term or campaign basis.
Brighter Directions are exhibiting at the National Sales Conference on the 8th October 2015 at Ricoh Arena in Coventry.
