Tune Up Your Sales & Marketing to Drive Growth

Asen Marketing Asen Marketing

Business Tips

Most of us spend a good amount of time in the car. But have you ever wondered how the engine that powers a vehicle works?

An engine gets its power from several pistons—or cylinders—that work together to move your car forward. If one of these pistons misfires or a cylinder gets out of sync with the others, the engine doesn’t operate efficiently (or may stop working altogether).

Your company operates a lot like an engine. The various departments and roles within your company work like pistons to drive your business forward. When a company’s “pistons” (aka people) work together, momentum builds and helps propel the business. But if they don’t work together, the business will quickly lose steam…

Sales & Marketing: Critical Departments in Driving Growth

Sales and marketing are two of the most critical areas for driving growth in any company. They’re both responsible for creating revenue, improving the customer experience, and building a successful business.

Unfortunately, it’s all too easy for these teams to fall out of sync. They often work separately with little to no insight into the other department’s agenda. And while there’s probably some overlap between their goals, there are also important differences between the two roles

In general terms, the marketing department is tasked with building awareness for your brand, products, and services, while the sales team focuses on closing individual deals. 

That’s why it’s essential to ensure the sales and marketing teams are well-aligned, communicating, and working together to achieve common goals. When these teams work together, their activities reinforce one another.

Bridging the Gap Between Sales & Marketing

Companies that take the time to align their sales and marketing teams find these teams have a significant positive impact when they work together. But when these departments are misaligned, it can lead to problems like wasted resources, missed opportunities, and lost sales.

To get sales and marketing on the same page, it’s important to understand why these two teams are often siloed. Naturally, the two areas share some broad common features. Both teams:

  • Want to close sales
  • Need to improve revenue
  • Focus on customers (and how they can solve their problems)
  • Measure success in terms of growth

But despite the similarities, marketing and sales departments approach the sales process differently.

  • Marketing efforts are—generally—broader than sales. Marketing campaigns are focused on overall brand awareness and lead generation and tend to be more geared towards the top of the sales funnel.
  • While the marketing department is designed to promote the business and its products/services to end users, sales teams are primarily interested in the individuals within a company who have purchasing power.
  • Sales teams spend much of their time prospecting, converting leads, or strengthening relationships, while marketing is highly focused on goals like: improving the brand and user experience, generating awareness, creating a positive perception… all of which will (hopefully) help send more leads to sales.

You can see why these two teams may run into some friction. The similarities are striking, and the differences are significant. To be successful leaders, we need to help sales and marketing overcome any potential challenges and see the value in a strong alliance.

When sales and marketing are friends, your company benefits!

Let’s look at how aligning sales and marketing can benefit your business.

  • Improved Efficiency. When sales and marketing work together, they can avoid duplication of effort and ensure that all resources are being used efficiently to achieve common goals.
  • More Confidence. In addition to improving efficiency, good cross-functional alignment also signals to partners and customers that your business has a clear mission and that your teams share a direction and sense of purpose. That has a real impact on confidence in your company, which shows in the bottom line.
  • Increased Revenue. Sales and marketing can generate more leads and close more deals by working together and sharing knowledge. Companies with aligned sales and marketing teams tend to have better business outcomes because these teams are able to share information and insights that help them close more deals.
  • Better Customer Experience. When sales and marketing work together successfully, it creates the best possible experience for customers. Buyers notice things like consistency and uniformity in their interactions with your internal teams. When sales and marketing break out of their silos, valuable information can be shared to help improve every stage of your customer’s journey.

How to Bridge the Gap

So, how do you help sales and marketing align? It begins by helping them see how their efforts complement one another.

When the teams understand their similarities and differences, they can discern ways to share information, work together, and create forward momentum for your business. A great place to start this process is breaking data out of departmental silos.

Marketing ignites interest for sales. Sales drives home marketing. Both have a trunk full of data on customer behaviors, preferences, and more. How can these teams come together to create a better experience at every stage of the customer journey? What kind of feedback is the sales team giving that could help marketing hone its efforts to produce better marketing qualified leads?

Aligning these two essential teams is not an easy process. With nearly 40 years of experience in B2B industries, Asen has the experience and knowledge you need to drive growth and thrive.

“Under Asen’s guidance, our company has experienced double digit growth and developed a marketing competency that I’m certain will propel us into the future.”

― Matt Johnston, Chief Supply Chain & Information Officer at Midlab

Start a conversation about how we can help your unique business by aligning internal departments under common goals and building a strong brand in the process.

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