Your marketing and sales teams are crucial if you want to profit in any market environment.
But all too often, your marketing and sales departments operate in different silos, primarily isolated.
In the worst-case scenarios, your marketing and sales teams may work against each other, reducing the efficiency of your business overall.
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| 6 Ways to Break the Isolation Between Marketing and Sales: eAskme |
For example, your marketing team may advertise a product as offering a particular service or say that the product is available at a specific price.
But your sales team sends a different message to your core consumers, resulting in confusion or accusations of deception.
Today, let us help your business avoid those outcomes by exploring six ways to break the isolation between marketing and sales.
Share Messaging Responsibilities:
For starters, ensure that both your marketing and sales teams share messaging responsibilities with your customers.
If your marketing team tries to dominate the messaging side, they may present your core consumers with inaccurate information relative to what the sales team knows.
Instead, both your sales team and marketing team should work together to determine the following:
- How products and services will be advertised?
- What benefits or elements should be highlighted in customer advertising and messaging
- How messaging will work for an upcoming product release
- And more
By sharing this responsibility, your marketing and sales teams will see themselves as pieces of a larger unit: your business.
That, in turn, will minimize the likelihood of either team stepping on the other or causing issues for the other by accident.
Democratize Data Sharing:
Similarly, you need to democratize data sharing between both departments.
Suppose your marketing team has a lot of advertising information, for example.
In that case, it needs to share that with your sales team so your salespeople can make more innovative sales and highlight what your target audience is after.
The reverse is also true, of course.
As your sales team makes sales, they'll gain a wealth of information they can use to facilitate future purchases.
But that data should be shared with your marketing team so they can continually refine and tweak their marketing messages for more significant effect.
Plan and Enact After-Work Get-Togethers:
There's no better way to ensure two teams in your business work together than to make them hang out together.
Plan and host after-work get-togethers like cocktail parties or restaurant dinners so everyone can become friends and socialize outside of workplace contexts.
This also ensures your marketing and sales teams work well together. It's also excellent for fostering better workplace morale and culture.
Emphasize Shared Goals:
Try to emphasize the shared goals that both your marketing and sales teams have with each other.
After all, they are part of the same overall business – they should both want to make the business more money since it also increases their profits.
In team meetings and as an executive, emphasize these shared goals, so your sales and marketing teams don't see themselves as isolated groups.
The more cooperative you force your business teams to be, the better.
Force Both Teams to Use the Same Communication Platform:
Another good way to break the isolation between marketing and sales departments is to force both teams to use the same communication platform.
Make sure to let one team use Slack and another use Skype when they can chat, exchange information, etc.
For example, if you have an eCommerce email marketing agency, make sure they use the same workplace communication platform as your sales team.
That way, department heads or front-line workers in both teams can communicate and send the same message to target customers.
Only allow both teams to use their platforms, jargon, and meeting times.
Integration and cooperation are essential to interdepartmental success, and using the same communication platform can help force this outcome.
For even better results, consider requiring all teams in your organization to use the same communication platform so everyone talks on the same app.
Offer Interdepartmental Training:
Lastly, consider offering interdepartmental training between both teams.
For instance, you can have the marketing team take a few sales classes and vice versa.
This is great for ensuring that both teams know what the other has to deal with and how they approach problems, facilitating empathy and understanding.
Interdepartmental training is a good thing anyway since, just like hosting after-work parties and socialization hours, it creates a sense of community and teamwork in your organization: always a good something when trying to attract and retain top talent!
As you can see, there are many ways to break down the isolation between your marketing and sales teams.
When they work together, your marketing and sales personnel will provide much more benefits to your company and result in greater profits overall.
If you still have any question, do share via comments.
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