Sales and Marketing are two very crucial business functions with symbiotic relationships where each one’s success depends on the other. And they are typically referred to in order as sales and marketing. But why not marketing and sales? There could be unconscious weighting of importance by this order. Who comes first? But let’s talk about opportunities to build reciprocal synergies for business success as we go forward with growth strategies into 2024.
While the definition of sales seems obvious, a brief description on each function follows:
- Marketing, as defined by the American Marketing Association (AMA), involves creating, communicating, delivering and exchanging offerings that have value for customers and clients. And further, activities to build a brand include market research, content creation and product positioning and promotion.
- Sales, as defined by the National Association of Sales Professional (NASP), is the process of persuasion and negotiation with a goal of converting leads into customers and building lasting relationships.
When sales and marketing teams share a common vision for outcomes, positive organizational impacts will follow. How can we boost alignment between these two business functions and drive successful growth going forward? Here are a few tactics and strategies to consider where co-workers in each function can step out of their comfort zone and into temporary roles for a sense of how they impact or support those around them:
Trading Places
What, you say? Yes, let’s trade places for a day. Live a day in your co-worker’s role and feel what’s it’s like to walk in their shoes.
From a marketing perspective, jump in your car and go make a day of sales calls. Call on existing customers and new opportunities. And, please, try at least one cold call just to see how it feels. Work with your sales team to develop a plan for the day to guide you. The objective is to get face-to-face feedback from existing customers and develop a sense for how your brand is perceived to those you don’t do business with yet. Now is your chance to break out of the Zoom room and go live for dialogue with customers and prospects we want to build relationships with.
From a sales perspective, devote a day immersed in your most creative mindset and visualize a product or service you think could be successful. Imagine what is needed to bring this brand to life. If possible, work from the same office your marketing team sits. How would you develop the brand and visualize how the customers you know best would react to your brand? How would you set pricing and what media would you chose to promote it? How do you define your target persona? And then, develop a source for leads and any opportunities to qualify these in advance. Go through all the steps you expect the marketing team will be taking to support you in your sales role, see how it feels.
Connect within industry Associations
If you aren’t a member of an industry trade association primary to your job function, I highly encourage you to consider it. You don’t have to be super active, but participate when possible and take advantage of training and networking programs where you can connect and stay current in the trends related to your role in marketing or sales. The leading associations to consider are the AMA for marketing and NSPD for sales. Building relationships with industry peers in local chapters will most certainly provide you with learning and mentoring opportunities.
And now, let’s flip the logic and suggest you also consider joining and/or following the association where your co-workers in the opposite role are involved. For example, if you work in a marketing role, consider connecting with the NSPD to follow industry trends in sales. Staying current in the trends for co-workers you support or you are supported by can only be a positive in understanding how to align better for organizational and business success. One quick and steady way to tune in is to follow the LinkedIn association page where content is posted on the association and industry trends.
Community Service Together
Doing good for others and giving back as a team. There is no downside to this. Working together side-by-side in service to those less fortunate is a win for all. Start by planning a day where marketing and sales team members can dedicate time for a cause together. And, surely, Google will guide you in the unlimited possibilities, but an example of an organization for reference, Hands on Atlanta has a wide variety of impact programs to choose from.
One quick and steady way to tune in to your industry is to follow the LinkedIn association page where content is posted on the association and industry trends.
MarketingAndSales™
One more idea to encourage alignment between marketing and sales, team up and find a word or phrase unique to your business and file the registration for a trademark. All the instructions along with the application are found in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office website at https://www.uspto.gov. The intent here is for the marketing and sales team to work together on all the details required to register the word or term. There is marketing and sales expertise needed to support the name search and evaluate goods and service to be covered, thus the benefit of teamwork. And, when successful, there is a name or term totally unique to your business and available to build your brand in a special way that no other business can use. To demonstrate how simple this can be, I registered a personal mark several years ago for my wife’s business. No attorney needed, just the registration form on the USPTO website and a small application fee.
In summary, synergies between marketing and sales teams are crucial in driving overall business success. When these two functions are aligned and in sync, amazing results are possible with acceleration of customer acquisition, conversion and retention. Customer relationships will flourish and 2024 can be your best year ever!
