Why Sales Teams Hold the Key to Effective Marketing Strategies

    
Introduction

Sales & Marketing Alignment

In 2022, researchers published reports sharing that 22.1 percent of sales teams stated that the most significant benefit of sales and marketing teams working together in better alignment made it easier to close more deals. 

However, the reverse is also true: Marketing teams are also reporting the benefits of partnering with sales teams. In fact, 20.3 percent of marketing teams delighted in the benefit of increased win rates after sales and marketing teams were more closely aligned. What’s more, 44.8 percent of marketers expressed that the importance of alignment between sales and marketing teams increased in 2022.

Why is this alignment so impactful? Why are sales and marketing teams who have made the effort to eliminate work siloes and unite their efforts such supporters of this strategy?

While there may be many reasons your organization is developing a new marketing strategy, one of the most important areas of focus should be sales. While boosting sales is often a major goal of any marketing campaign, some organizations may not be willing to bring a sales team into the fold—or to put the sales team in the driver’s seat. However, your sales team can be the key to unlocking new opportunities and new successes with your marketing strategies. Here’s what you need to know.

   
Chapter I

How Sales and Marketing Are Different—And How They’re Alike

To a casual consumer, the terms “sales” and “marketing” are often used interchangeably. On one hand, this makes a lot of sense—both departments are, after all, working to sell your products or services to customers to generate income for your organization. However, those who work in either field know there are just as many differences in how these two departments function, as well as how they fill different needs within your organization. 

Marketing sets the stage for a sale to happen—in a very meaningful way. It’s all about how customers learn about a brand and how that reputation is maintained. Marketing sets plans into motion to engage with your current and prospective customers, raise your brand profile, and attract the right target audience of interested parties who will be most likely to make a purchase. Your marketing team is also responsible for communicating the benefits of your brand and then leveraging these benefits to educate and attract customers. In other words, it’s about the Four Ps:

  • Product
  • Price
  • Place 
  • Promotion

Sales, then, is all about gaining traction—using the groundwork your marketing team laid—to ensure a final transaction or sale happens. It involves a careful, personalized plan (often stocked with tools and resources) to turn interested prospects into active buyers, ultimately securing revenue for your brand.

While marketing is about creating and maintaining brand reputation, sales is about closing the deal on your organization’s goods and services to bring in revenue based on this information.

But make no mistake: Both roles are equally important to an organization’s success. Using a volleyball analogy, it’s the marketing team that comes in with the bump and set to keep the ball in the air and connect with target audiences and existing customers alike, all to ensure the sales team can spike the ball, therefore earning the entire team a point—or in this case, a sale. The marketing team warms up your target audience—through strategies like increasing brand recognition, creating engaging content, and sending targeted campaigns—so your salespeople are truly ready to make a sale to interested, eager customers.

Ultimately, your sales and marketing teams are after the same end goal: To bring in revenue through purchases of goods and/or services. This is why it can be so powerful to work together. The main difference is in the approach:

  • Marketing connects to a whole range of users by creating conceptual ideal customers and research-backed target audiences. Then, this team crafts intentional strategies and processes to promote products and services, drive interest, and inspire engagement based on these concepts. 
  • Sales focuses more on individual leads rather than an array of potential or hypothetical customers. They interact on a far more personal level, working to meet the needs of real clients and customers to meet sales goals. 
    
Chapter II

The Benefit of Boots on the Ground

Your sales team is often the first line of communication with your customers. The benefit here is first-hand, field-tested experience about what works in the real world—as well as what doesn’t. 

When you align with your sales team, you tap into a wealth of information about how your marketing is received. Your sales team can provide feedback on your existing products or services, as well as what your clients and customers are inquiring about, what their current needs are, and the opportunities you have as an organization to fill these needs. Additionally, they can give you authentic responses from actual clients regarding what messaging resonates with your target market and what might be striking the wrong chord.

Think of it this way: You’re the marketing expert. Your salespeople are the experts on who your real clients and customers are. Together, you possess a great deal of knowledge that’s even more powerful when combined.

This boots-on-the-ground intel is a perfect way to fuel a sales-driven marketing strategy. This strategy aims to drive revenue and grow sales by fostering collaboration between sales and marketing and inspiring customers to move through the sales funnel. 

Years ago, product designers discovered how much time, money, and resources they could save if they teamed up with the manufacturing team to come up with designs that serve the manufacturing processes, as opposed to passing along designs without any feedback from manufacturing. Rather than just coexisting, the two teams work together to make both processes better. Similarly, when marketing teams align with their sales teams to create the same level of interconnectedness and empower the sales team to do what they do best, it can have a similar result:

  • Performance metrics improve
  • Sales cycles shorten
  • Market-entry costs lower
  • Sales costs go down

Even so, many organizations feel disconnected from their target audiences and their customers. Often, this is because their sales and marketing teams aren’t communicating—or they don’t have the tools and structures in place to truly work together. One report even shared that fewer than half of brands today feel that they have all the systems in place to eliminate work silos and boost digital engagement—systems like:

  • Technologies and tools
  • Consistent customer journey mapping
  • Data shared between departments or the channels to make this possible
    
Chapter III

Using Sales Insights to Hone Email Marketing Strategies

One of the most significant ways that sales teams can inform marketing strategies is by providing customer feedback to fine-tune messaging in marketing emails so they are laser-focused on the things that matter most to customers.

If you have ever received a marketing email that taps into your needs and wants, you know the power of a well-crafted message. Conversely, if you’ve ever read an email that doesn’t hit the right notes, solves the exact problem you’ve been looking to solve, or seems tone-deaf to the things that matter most to you, you also know the importance of good marketing. 

The difference between a successful marketing email and an unsuccessful one often has everything to do with customer feedback, which is where your sales team comes into play. The information your clients and customers share with your sales team can impact your target audience data and buyer personas, and it can also help tailor your email messaging to your exact audience’s preferences, pain points, and needs. When your sales team partners with your marketing team, your marketing team can use this information to do things like:

  • Anticipate customer concerns and prevent past issues or gaps in communication from recurring
  • Promote products and/or services that are particularly relevant to specific audience groups
  • Adjust the products and services you offer to better meet the needs of your most loyal customer types and buyer personas
  • Build email marketing campaigns that feel far more personal, resonate deeply with your specific audiences, and foster better results overall

When your marketing team collaborates with your sales team, you gain real insight into who your customers are which can strengthen customer loyalty to your brand—which, in turn, can drive your sales and business objectives. You can even hone the wording and tone of your marketing messaging to connect with your audience so that customers who adopt a more formal tone or want more of a professional relationship feel that their needs are being met, while other customer segments who prefer a more casual tone don’t feel that the marketing they see is too stiff or rigid for them.

    
Chapter IV

Grow Stronger, Together

When sales and marketing teams align, everyone grows stronger:

  • Salespeople can go beyond meeting demand for products and services—because they can help create this demand.
  • Sales teams benefit from more transparency regarding everything that goes into marketing and have a better understanding of the correlation between advertising and marketing costs and real-life sales.
  • Marketing teams can introduce new campaigns and release upcoming product/service announcements when sales teams feel prepared to make the most of them. 

Sales and marketing team alignment is also great for Account-Based Marketing (ABM), which is all about focusing on building personalized buying experiences for high-value clients and customers to build relationships, increase sales, and get better, more qualified clients. When you eliminate work silos and collaborate across teams, this can have all kinds of benefits for your organization, including: 

  • Sales and marketing teams are working toward a shared goal
  • All teams adhere to your established budget
  • Everyone knows their roles and responsibilities

But it’s not just your internal teams that benefit from this kind of “cross training;” your clients and customers benefit, too—in the form of a smoother buying experience with value at each touchpoint in the journey, as well as more consistent messaging. In fact, 28 percent of sales professionals report that the biggest impact of having sales and marketing in alignment is the customer experience itself. Why does this matter so much? Today’s consumers are 5.1 times more likely to recommend an organization if their customer experience is a positive one. In turn, your organization enjoys increased organic growth and a better brand reputation.

    
Chapter V

Get More Out of Your Marketing Investment

When it comes to building an effective marketing strategy—one that maximizes your investment—having the sales team on board makes all the difference across the entire sales funnel.

At the beginning of the sales funnel, aligning sales and marketing can have a significant impact on lead quality, or rather, how likely a prospective lead is to become a client or customer. This includes how engaged they are, how good of a fit your goods and services are for their needs, and whether or not they intend to buy. These high-quality leads are far more likely to become paying customers—which means that you’re making the most of your marketing investment.

In concrete terms, sales and marketing alignment improves lead quality by a notable value. Around 44 percent of sales professionals have concerns regarding lead quality—unless sales and marketing are aligned. When these teams collaborate, 26 percent of professionals report seeing a marked improvement in lead quality.

Why is this? It has to do with your ideal customer profile. When your sales and marketing departments have a shared understanding of who your ideal clients and customers are, your marketing team can craft strategies to tap into these audiences, which means your sales team is selling to a higher number of interested, qualified leads.

What’s more, the alignment of sales and marketing departments translates into stronger revenue growth. In one survey, 32 percent of respondents shared that the most compelling benefit of this union was revenue growth. How does this sales-marketing partnership increase your profit margins?

  • You are using your resources more efficiently, spending less on unqualified leads or the wrong audiences, and improving your marketing ROI.
  • You are delivering a consistent message brand-wide, which builds audience trust, speeds up the entire sales cycle, and leads to faster conversions.
  • You are spending time connecting with—and selling to—high-quality leads, which equals more sales and more revenue.
  • You are getting real feedback from your salespeople, which empowers your marketing teams to fine-tune their strategies to address real consumer pain points. 
  • You are improving the overall customer experience, which equals happier customers and more brand advocates.
     
Chapter VI

Building a Marketing and Sales Plan—Together

Your sales and marketing efforts should work together in harmony to encourage leads through the sales funnel to drive customer acquisition. Otherwise, what is your goal—and how can you achieve it? That’s why a Sales and Marketing Strategy that’s created in collaboration is so important—because it details exactly how both teams will work together to achieve a common goal.

What is a Sales and Marketing Strategy? It’s a detailed plan for how these two departments can work together to reach qualified prospects and turn them into great customers and clients. Every action comes out of this unified strategy. 

There’s proof in numbers to explain why a collaborative Sales and Marketing Strategy is so critical. Organizations that have aligned their sales and marketing efforts have earned 208 percent more revenue from their marketing efforts compared to their less-unified counterparts. Plus, the organizations that work in sync average an astonishing 32 percent growth in revenue year over year.

What sorts of considerations should go into a highly-aligned Sales and Marketing Strategy?

  • Target Audiences and Customer Personas: Sales and marketing professionals look at target audiences and customer personas through different lenses—which often leads to missed connections with new prospects. However a unified plan should incorporate a blend of both perspectives to arrive at a shared target audience and customer persona set that incorporates strategic, growth-driven initiatives and real-world information.
  • Business Objectives and Marketing Budget: Marketing and sales teams work together to convert the same set of leads into customers and clients and achieve the same goals—so why shouldn’t they arrive at the same business objectives and budgets to make it all happen? Both departments should be involved from the beginning of the sales funnel to the very end, which means they need to be on the same page regarding their objectives and the resources they plan to use to get there.
  • Brand Differentiators: Your sales and marketing departments are playing on the same team—and they need to know what makes that team so special. How does your organization uniquely cater to your target audience? What sets you apart from your competitors? You can set both departments up for success by identifying shared differentiators—everything from how you price your products and services to what resonates with real customers. These differentiators can then inform every piece of sales and marketing content to establish a unified voice and message for a consistent, seamless customer experience. 
  • The Customer Buying Journey: Your sales and marketing teams should both be in the loop about each touchpoint along the customer journey from how prospective leads first hear about your brand through the end of their customer lifecycle; everything from acquisition to churn. This way, both departments can share insights to improve the customer experience and coordinate the handoff from marketing to sales.

  • Brand Content: Your content does alot of work to attract and engage customers and clients—and can even play an important role in converting leads into buyers. As such, your sales and marketing professionals should have a well-defined hand in creating compelling content, including an understanding of the role both teams play. Your Sales and Marketing Strategy should include an audit of your content to spot gaps and find opportunities to create new content that can encourage client interactions no matter where they are in the buying journey. Marketers can use this content to engage with prospects, and your sales team can pass along relevant content to interested parties. 
    
Chapter VII

Tracking Sales Metrics to Drive Marketing Decisions

As your sales and marketing departments work together, data will be the real key to fostering growth. It’s how you make informed decisions and better understand the why behind what strategies are most effective for your organization. When you analyze these points, you also gain a clearer picture of where you can improve your Sales and Marketing Strategy.

Your sales metrics are the data points available that represent your overall performance. You can use them to do things like:

  • Track progress toward business objectives
  • Prepare new strategies for future growth
  • Adjust pricing or compensation
  • Pinpoint any existing issues with your current strategies

But here’s the truth. There is so much data available today—and so many ways to log and evaluate it all—that it can be easy to feel overwhelmed. Which numbers are relevant to sales and marketing? Which should you pay attention to? 

Here are a few sales metrics that can make a difference in your Sales and Marketing Strategy:

  • The cost of selling and marketing, by client
  • Sales lost to competitors
  • The average length of the sales cycle, from marketing to conversion
  • The rate of conversion at every point in the sales funnel
  • The percentage of leads your sales team reaches out to versus the percentage dropped
  • The percentage of highly qualified leads
  • Time spent on selling activities
  • Instances of marketing collateral (brochures, product sheets, etc) used by salespeople

There’s so much you can do with data to track your progress, evaluate your work compared to your key performance indicators (KPIs), and look at how your sales and marketing teams work together. It’s an indispensable tool to elevate your operations and take your successes to new levels.

     
Conclusion

Connect with Our Team

At Cogo & Co., we’re committed to helping you grow your business through marketing—all at a scale that works for you. Our dedicated team will work alongside your sales and marketing teams alike to get a true finger on the pulse of what makes your organization unique, as well as what makes it flourish.

Whether you need tactical support to strengthen your efforts working on a single initiative, or you need in-depth expertise, we’re here for you with customized support.

 

Schedule a FREE Consultation

Contributors:

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Anthony Grower

Topic Specialist

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Kelly Brighton

Topic Specialist

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Richard Peace

Topic Specialist

Sources:

1) Even the all-powerful Pointing: Almost Unorthographic.
2) Far far away, behind the word mountains: www.vokalia-and-consonantia.com
3) The copy warned: The Little Blind Text
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