Marketing Influencers

DO THIS, NOT THAT FOR SUCCESSFUL COOPERATION BETWEEN SALES & MARKETING

by: Ginger Clay

The effectiveness of any marketing effort is only as good as the cooperation and collaboration between the sales and marketing teams. This is not always as easy as it may seem. The role of the marketing team is to bring interested buyers to the table, court interested buyers and pass those buyers to sales.  The role of sales is to bring qualified and interested buyers to transaction.

The rub between marketing and sales usually rears its head when marketing believes they are delivering qualified buyers and sales cannot bring those potential buyers to transaction. Sales might feel that they are unable to close sales due to the quality and type of buyer. When this occurs, there is a breakdown in communication and ability to measure the “quality” of the lead through the entire marketing and sales pipeline. To avoid such a dilemma, we suggest you be mindful of the following Do’s and Don’ts for creating profitable synergy between your sales and marketing teams.

DO	DON’T
Do create a set of measurements for tracking the effectiveness of a lead.	Don’t allow the sales or marketing team to dictate the “effectiveness” of a lead. Lead scoring (defined in Step 8: Marketing & Sales Metrics) determines if a lead is truly profitable and worth pursuing.
Do communicate your end-goal targets to both the sales and marketing teams collectively.	Don’t not communicate your end-goal results. Your sales and marketing team wants to perform and receive praise for their performance. A lack of communication between management and the marketing and sales team only invites discourse. As a manager it is your duty to set and communicate end-goal results, allowing your marketing and sales team to work together to achieve those goals.
Do institute a quarterly review between your Marketing and Sales managers to discuss the “effectiveness” of current leads in the pipeline tied to specific marketing strategies.	Don’t hope that your marketing and sales team will evaluate lead effectiveness, because they won’t! Marketing has their hands in several projects at one time while sales it looking to hit a set dollar amount each month. While sales and marketing share the same objective- to increase revenue- their definition of “success” is measured differently.
Do encourage cooperation between the marketing and sales efforts.	Don’t pit your sales team against your marketing team. We see this happen all the time as an effort to motivate the sales team to work “harder.” This tactic only results in divided efforts.
Do provide public accolades and rewards for achieved results.	Don’t withhold praise for earned success. This is a group of individuals that strive for public praise. Be careful to criticize this group publically. Their motivation is based on their perception of their performance.

 

Ginger Clay provides the spunk and drive behind 4-Profit’s marketing strategy, which is designed to help solution providers transition from little to no-marketing to focused outsourced marketing strategy that positions solution providers uniquely in their market space, drives demand, and maximize sales effectiveness. To learn more about 4-Profit and Ginger’s services visit www.4-profit.com.