| Feature
Article TOGETHER
- Sales and Marketing
By Mary Sullivan
Too often a company’s Sales and Marketing
groups are out of sync. At worst, they’re rivals, literally
undermining each other. Exaggeration? Sadly, we’ve seen
it more than once.
Why should Sales and Marketing work together?
KickStart believes that good marketing enables the sale. Using
a military analogy, Marketing provides the weapons, and Sales
fights the war. Ask any soldier – If you have unsuitable
weapons, you’re going to lose the battle.
Marketing draws customers’ attention,
describes your offer and tells how it benefits customers.
But let’s face it – Marketing needs Sales to nurture
the relationship, build a business case and close the deal.
Without Sales, there probably won’t be a sale.
Can Sales get along without Marketing? Well,
if sales people develop the positioning, create sales tools
and track down qualified prospects, where do they find time
to work directly with prospects and customers? And if each
sales rep does this, you end up with conflicting messages
about who you are, and you've wasted time and money on duplicate
efforts.
Get Better, Faster Results with Integrated
Sales and Marketing
Here are some steps to get Sales and Marketing
working together. They require conversations between the two
groups, but it’s well worth the time.
* Think of Sales as Marketing’s customer.
Using the military analogy again, the defense contractor’s
customer is the army. They need to know what their customer
needs if they’re going to get their customer to buy.
The Marketing team that builds the best weapons helps their
Sales force win more revenue! And they don’t waste money
on sales tools that Sales can’t/won’t use.
* Develop goals, objectives and metrics
jointly. Set expectations together – not just once,
but every quarter. When Marketing launches a product, Sales
needs to be ready. If Sales needs to increase revenue, Marketing
needs to adjust pricing and campaigns. Agreed-upon measurements
and review criteria let you know what’s working and
what is wasting your time and money. Aim together and maximize
revenue for your company.
* Synchronize product and sales cycles.
Like it or not, sales happen cyclically. In tech, it’s
the end of the quarter and, big-time, at the end of the fiscal
year. Keep the sales cycle in mind when introducing new products
so Sales can make best use of prime selling time. If you’re
a toy manufacturer, you get new toys out in time for holiday
shopping or waste a huge revenue opportunity.
* Get commitment to consistent messages
and brand usage. After Marketing defines your positioning,
be sure they communicate it in an easy-to-digest format so
Sales can establish your uniqueness in the minds of customers.
If everyone is singing the same song, it will be heard loud
and clear in the marketplace.
It’s really about communicating. Both
ways! Continuously!
Programs That Make the Most of Sales and
Marketing TOGETHER
* Craft winning messages – Be able
to say succinctly how your product or service makes a difference
to customers. Marketing needs to verify with Sales that their
messages will really work. Then they must train the entire
Sales organization on using them. Sales people love to be
able to make a good sales pitch.
* Prepare for the competition – Top
sales people address the competition before they hear an objection.
They know the market landscape, where the selling pitfalls
may lie, and are prepared to deal with them. When Marketing
uncovers market intelligence and shares it with Sales, the
entire team is prepared to meet the competition head on. When
Sales uncovers competitive information and feeds it back to
Marketing, they can alter programs, products or pricing to
stay competitive.
* Synchronize sales and marketing plans
– If someone doesn’t know where they’re
going, when they reach a fork in the road, how do they decide
direction to choose? Sales and Marketing need to have the
same roadmap to meet a common goal - maximizing revenue. They
must refine their plans in consultation with each other, and
then make sure everyone involved knows what the plans are.
* Launch products effectively – When
you launch a product, it’s easy to get wrapped up in
what it is and what it does. But what does it do for your
customers? How will they benefit? Marketing must tell a compelling
story to the media and analysts, and train Sales on how to
communicate the product’s value to customers.
* Develop qualified leads – Finding
leads takes a lot of time and is rightly the job of Marketing.
A lead is only useful to Sales if it is a prospect with a
genuine reason to be interested in what you offer, and with
the budget and the authority to buy. Any other “lead”
is unqualified and wastes valuable selling time.
* Use centralized customer information –
Both Marketing and Sales need accurate and up-to-date prospect
and customer information. A central database enables Marketing
to quickly communicate with customers and generate leads.
And it allows Sales to follow up on leads while they’re
hot!
* Establish field readiness – You’ll
need to provide your sales team – direct or indirect,
new or veterans – with everything they need for successful
sales calls: understanding the corporate pitch, knowing the
competitive landscape, dealing with objections. When you train
Sales with the “right stuff” the troops have what
it takes to face customers confidently and effectively.
Integrate your Sales and Marketing
efforts and watch how quickly your business reaches its revenue,
market share and bottom line goals! KickStart Alliance can
help. We provide best-in-class marketing and sales leadership
to help organizations, large and small, increase revenue and
shorten the sales cycle. |
