Eliminate barriers between sales and marketing for better results

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Traditionally, sales teams and marketing teams have been known to have contentious relationships. Friction often arises between these two departments, leading to a long list of issues and directly impacting the company’s revenue generation.

To put the issue into perspective with data, Outfunnel’s 2022 Revenue Marketing Report shows that revenue growth is actually 70% more common among B2B organizations that have tightly aligned sales and marketing departments.

Why barriers exist between sales and marketing

There are a variety of reasons why sales and marketing teams build barriers rather than bridges. While team dynamics, functions, structures and culture can differ from one company to another, there is still the traditional perception of sales and marketing roles. Examples of long-held perceptions of different priorities between sales and marketing departments include:

  • Sales focuses on the present while marketing focuses on the future.
  • Sales focuses on face-to-face outreach conversations while marketing focuses on one-to-many communication.
  • Sales focuses on building personal relationships while marketing focuses on building and maintaining brand reputation.
  • Sales is mainly focused on push communication (outbound), while marketing is mainly focused on pull communication (inbound).

Of course, this list isn’t exhaustive, but it gives you a good idea of ​​how the goals and activities of sales and marketing teams have traditionally differed, and why barriers are likely to form unless a coordinated effort is made to prevent them.

Aside from traditional purposes and activities, there are other reasons why barriers are developing between sales and marketing departments. For example, their performance is judged differently. As a result, these two groups are paid different incentives.

A salesperson is typically judged and rewarded based on completed sales, while a marketer’s performance is assessed based on the results of certain marketing programs and whether the results of the programs have met goals far different than closing sales.

Additionally, a marketer’s goals (and rewards) might depend on programs that take much longer to track and evaluate, and these programs aren’t always directly linked to a completed sale. For example, it can take weeks or months to evaluate marketing programs in the context of brand awareness and brand differentiation, whether or not they have brought the company the desired long-term competitive advantage.

In a report published by Harvard Business Review magazine, researchers explained that sales teams focus on people while marketers focus on programs. Therefore, they should not be judged in the same way.

Fortunately, the researchers found that companies can take steps to integrate the two teams and achieve better results. The process requires understanding where your teams currently are in their relationship to each other, and then following best practices to achieve integration.

Evolution from an isolated to an integrated sales and marketing relationship

According to the Harvard Business Review report, there are four types of relationships that sales and marketing teams can fall into: undefined, defined, aligned, and integrated. The goal is to be fully integrated to get the best results.

An undefined team is a team where sales and marketing teams are completely isolated. You work independently with your own goals and projects. It’s unlikely that one team will know what the other team is working on until a problem arises.

A defined team is one where processes have been put in place to mitigate problems between sales and marketing. In this relationship, both teams know what the other department is responsible for and they stick to their own tasks and projects.

Getting one step closer to integration is the aligned relationship where clear boundaries have been set, but those boundaries are not set in stone. Instead, the two teams work together and consult.

After all, a fully integrated team is one where the lines between departments are blurred. Systems, processes and metrics are shared, and budgets can be flexibly adjusted to the needs of the organization (i.e. to achieve the best results). Everyone works in a coordinated effort, with a rising tide lifting all boats (or the opposite).

Alyssa Gatto, Vice President, Marketing & Client Success at Cannabiz Media, shares the importance of integration based on her experience leading the marketing team at Cannabiz Media. She explains, “Working with the sales team is a breeze for me as a marketer. After all, they are our boots on the ground and work directly with the target group. In one-on-one meetings with our prospects, they can report more substantively on which approaches resonate most than website and email analytics can tell me. This information directly informs how we shape our marketing strategies and messaging, which in turn creates even more content and resources for the sales team to leverage.”

Integration is a win-win for sales and marketing teams. As you can imagine, when everyone works together to achieve agreed goals in a fully integrated relationship, results improve.

Davis Thode, Vice President of Sales at Cannabiz Media, explains what integration can look like when you put it into action, based on his experience leading the sales team at Cannabiz Media. He says, “Sales and marketing are very different, but they need to work in sync to achieve their common goal – generating revenue. Without a good marketing strategy, your sales team will struggle to attract new qualified leads. If your sales process is disorganized and your sales reps don’t have an efficient way to screen prospects, it doesn’t matter how many leads your marketing efforts produce. Open communication and trust in the abilities of the other team are essential to achieve the common goal.”

Key insights to break down barriers between sales and marketing for better results

Breaking down barriers between sales and marketing teams starts with running your business. You have to buy into the integration process. In addition, they must lead by example so that employees are motivated to make the effort needed to integrate the strategies, priorities, and tactics of two very different teams. This requires open and transparent communication, which is one of the most important keys to successful sales and marketing integration.

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