How to Create A Strong Relationship Between Marketing and Sales

Traditionally, these two departments have been run as completely separate entities in the enterprise, often working in different parts of the building, or even at completely different locations altogether.

The result, of course, has been disharmony, which is inevitably bred from the inherent lack of communication that keeping two teams disparate engenders.
And a lot of the problem comes down to a very simple yet fundamental discrepancy as to what defines a lead as being “sales-ready”. On one side of the fence, the guys in marketing have their own definition – but on the other, the sales guys have a completely different idea as to what constitutes a genuine opportunity to make a sale.
And so here’s the scenario: marketing nurtures a bunch of leads to the point where they believe they’re ready to be passed over to the sales team, and they do so. Sales, however, sifts through these so-called leads, but determines half of them aren’t sales-ready at all. Then, when they fail to close out deals, it’s the marketing they blame for not doing their job properly – whilst of course marketing digs their heels in and say that it’s the sales guys that are useless.
Either way, leads are lost, revenue is not maximised, and the conflict between these divisions continues to inflate.

Defining a “Qualified Lead”

It’s a problem that is coming into ever-sharper focus amongst business professionals the world over. Indeed, a 2014 study by CSO Insights found that less than 1 in 2 companies have an agreed-upon definition of what a “sales-ready lead” actually is.

(Image source: marketingcharts.com)

The figures reveal, as you can see, not much movement over the three years, and in the two years since this study was conducted I’m pretty certain – from my own experience – that they won’t have shifted that much more.
And that’s a big shame. For indeed, further findings from the CSO Insights study reveal that those companies which do work with a formalised “sales-ready” definition enjoy substantially higher conversion rates:

“Among those with a formally agreed-upon definition of what constitutes a qualified lead, some 29.8% claim a lead conversion rate (leads converted to opportunities) of more than 75%. By contrast, only 18.2% of firms that lack a qualified definition at all boast conversion rates at that level, as do 20.8% of firms with an informal definition.”

How to Create A Strong Relationship Between Marketing and Sales

Many companies know that they need to induce a culture-change within their walls, though few have yet to implement it. Indeed, Marketing Week reveals some alarming figures from recruitment company Ranstad that highlight this point:

“Despite the fact that 80% of businesses recognise the benefits of greater alignment between sales and marketing, most (60%) aren’t unifying their divisions.”

So, what’s to be done?
Well, here are four tips to start building a stronger relationship between sales and marketing.

1- Formalise Your “Qualified Lead” Definition

I think I’ve hammered the point home thus far – but here’s just one more reminder to get it sorted, and quick!

2- Mix Desks

The best way to improve relationships between your teams is to get them in the same room working together. Not only will each division be able to learn more about what the other does (and therefore work out what each can do to better support the other), but working relationships will be better. Happy workers are productive workers – and a perpetual “us-against-them” conflict rarely does much for bringing smiles to faces.

3- Let Marketing Listen in on Sales Calls

Beyond what can be learned by mixing desks, take this simple step to let the process of education continue. If marketing teams really are passing over leads that aren’t sales-ready, then perhaps it’s simply because they don’t understand the conversations that the sales team has regularly with prospects. Marketers need to know what real customers ask sales associates. With this information, marketing can then start to create content that answers these questions long before a prospect picks up the phone, making the conversion journey more streamlined, and the sales team with less problems to tackle when trying to seal a deal.

4- Give Marketing Access to Sales Enquiry Emails

Another great source of content ideas are found in the emails that are sent to sales and customer services. After making contact with a prospect, sales are very often asked questions, such as “How does this work?” and “How do I do this?”. By identifying these pain points, marketing can set to work addressing them in the content that they produce, once again lubricating the sales funnel for easier prospect passage.

Do you want to improve company culture and find a great solution that will help sales and marketing work better together? What about enabling a more accurate lead generation process? Take a look at the LeadSeed sales and marketing platform. Our service delivers better qualified new business leads and strengthens customer relationships. Get in touch to find out more.

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Training New Sales People

Improving outcomes of sales training

Joining a sales force as the new kid can be a daunting time, whether you’re actually an experienced sales veteran, or literally the new kid out of college. It’s generally a period of intense information provision to get to know people, processes and products.

After the time and expense invested in finding the right people and agreeing terms, Sales Managers and HR departments put a lot of focus on the first phase of orientation to ensure that new recruits get off to a flying start. The difficult balance is conveying everything that’s important to know without overloading the new recruit.

Often, the initial training is on “how to sell in our industry” – what a good customer profile looks like, who the decision makers are and how they make decisions, how to spot an opportunity, what questions to ask, what signals to pick up on etc. This information can be delivered in classroom style training, using case studies and delivered by a sales trainer or experienced sales person and is quite easily scaled and repeated. But is this often-used format really the best thing to do?

Measuring impact

This Sales Performance International research shows that much of what’s learned in intense classroom training sessions is forgotten within 90 days and improvements in technique or outcomes taper quickly. This should teach us that we shouldn’t keep on doing things the way we’ve always done them.

We know that the most effective selling is based on effective listening. Understanding the cues from a prospect and picking up on specific nuances of the requirement helps to ensure the best positioning of the product/solution. This type of information is best absorbed through observation of an experienced sales person in action, and reciprocal expert mentoring of the trainee which becomes time consuming and expensive through opportunity cost and isn’t easily scalable or repeatable.

This becomes a bigger issue as time moves on, when sales people have been on board for a period of time and the initial training has been long forgotten. When sales are good, training tends to be forgotten altogether unless a new product or solution needs to be launched. When times get tough, though, we turn to training to help re-energize and focus people to improve efficiency and productivity.

Supporting the process of improvement

The same Sales Performance International research report goes on to recommend aligning sales training to a proven sales process – the essential basis for practicing the skills taught. Without structure and repeatability, old habits creep back in, so perhaps the most important element of lasting change and improvement is tracking behavior and measurement of outcomes. To take it to the extreme is to base pay and bonus structures on behavior. As the management advice goes: That which gets measured gets done. And particularly in sales: That which gets paid against gets done first.

To improve sales effectiveness and efficiency should reap multiple benefits – improved revenues, naturally, but also happier, more motivated staff which turnover less frequently and actually lead to less of a need to invest in the whole recruitment and on-boarding cycle in the first place. So, it pays to define the best practice processes, align and integrate the sales training to the process and put in place the systems and measurements to ensure that your people can use them easily and effectively.

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