Tried-and-True Tips for Sales and Marketing Alignment
My interest in sales and marketing alignment best practices started when our Latin American sales team grew a ton in just a few weeks.
Suddenly, communication between Sales and Marketing (nicknamed "smarketing") was much harder to get right. When we were a smaller team, I could meet one-on-one with each salesperson and talk about how we could help generate more (and better) leads ... but that wasn't scalable as we grew.
I needed help. To learn what other marketers were doing to work efficiently with their sales teams, I scheduled meetings with several members of our field and channel marketing team.
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It turns out that each marketer I spoke with had great advice and processes to better work with Sales ... but none of them had the same advice and process.
To help share the information across our team and with anyone else new to Sales and Marketing alignment, I decided to compile everyone's best practices into a blog post.
Sales Alignment
Before we dive into those best practices, however, let's take a second and discuss Sales alignment. Sales alignment refers to the steps your sales team takes to ensure they're aligned with Marketing. Here are a few Sales alignment strategies.
Organize Sales around buyer personas.
Buyer personas aren't just valuable to Marketing; they also educate Sales on who they're selling to, what they care about, and how to help them. Consider your buyer personas as you organize your sales team, create sales enablement materials, set up your CRM email templates.
Designate staff to receive and qualify leads.
One avenue through which Sales and Marketing will always be connected is through lead sharing. As Marketing generates leads through content offers and campaigns, they pass them to Sales to qualify, nurture, and convert.
Who on your Sales team accepts marketing qualified leads? If you can't answer that question in five seconds flat, you need to review your Sales team structure and designate someone (if not a small team) to receive and assign these leads. If there's one place where Sales and Marketing need to be aligned, this is it.
Facilitate training between teams if needed.
Have Sales hold product demonstrations for Marketing (perhaps the same ones they give prospective customers). Alternatively, ask Sales if they have had some trouble with specific questions during their calls. Smarketing is just as much about education as it is about alignment.
Sales and Marketing Best Practices
Here are some of the best smarketing tips and tricks that my colleagues use.
1. Meet regularly.
The best way for Sales and Marketing to stay connected is to, well, stay connected. Regular meetings are an effective way to avoid siloing these teams.
Have an onboarding smarketing meeting with every new salesperson.
In order to support Sales successfully, it is very important to share processes, resources, and best practices from the start. Use this time to get to know each other and share how Marketing will be supporting the sales team. If you have a large number of salespeople starting, hold a monthly meeting to set these expectations and field any questions new folks might have.
Attend sales weekly meetings.
Attending weekly sales meetings allows marketers to know how Sales is doing with their quota and goals, and offer support when needed. Use this time to share the upcoming campaigns, content, and offers that Marketing will be promoting that week. Also ask for content ideas and recommendations for your future offers and blog posts.
Have a monthly meeting with sales managers.
Marketing and sales managers should meet on a monthly basis to analyze results and evaluate their SLA. Important metrics to share are lead generation, MQLs, percent of leads worked, and lead-to-customer conversion rate.
Attend events together.
Whether it's an industry meetup group, happy hour in your office, or an organized conference — spend time together in a casual setting. Attending an event together provides you with a unique opportunity to get to know your Sales department outside of the traditional work environment.
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