How can you get marketing and Sales on the Same Page

A common business pain is that Marketing and Sales seem to be divergent efforts, instead of the cohesive teamwork desired and often planned for, but poorly executed. There is philosophical argument that Marketing will never work well with Sales because Sales reps are always looking for any reason to explain why they are missing their numbers, and the easiest target is the ‘poor quality of the leads or not enough qualified prospects in the pipeline. And, of course if only marketing could figure it out, sales would double overnight.

Obviously Marketing must push back that there are plenty of qualified opportunities being sent to Sales, but they are not fulfilling the message the Marketing Campaign effectively and are losing the sales on their own merits. And with Marketing ROI being so tough to accurately calculate, the need to justify the ROI of every marketing dollar spent is crucial as the Marketing budget is the first to be slashed. This kind of disconnect can result in serious tension and lack of cohesive effort resulting in lack of sales, loss of customers, wasted time, and eroding market share.

So what is the solution, how can we make Sales and Marketing come together? Well the answer is surprisingly simple. The largest reason for the disconnect is that the systems used to manage the leads prospects and customers are themselves disconnected. That is to say having separate silos of customer information makes for a very painful handoff from marketing to sales, resulting in mis communications between Sales and Marketing about current campaigns, messages, promotions, etc. Often Sales feels in the dark about promotions and the fist time they hear about the promotion is when the customer tells them it is on the website.

Measuring the ROI of the various campaigns is so time consuming and error prone that there often is more time spent compiling numbers and justifying costs than is necessary and takes time away from working to ensure the campaigns success.

Miscommunication loses sales. If you have done any sales, you understand that you are always only one question away from losing a sale. If Sales is not fully up to date on the current message being projected by marketing, it is very difficult to sell as you are put in the position of constantly being reactive. With a shared system where Marketing campaigns can be plainned, discussed and digested prior to launch can allow Sales to ask the right questions to be in a proactive selling position. Selllng reactively day after day can really wear down your Sales reps. It is a tough enough job selling as it is, if you put your people in a position of knowledge, however, they will have the power to excel, without expending as much effort.