Arguably one of the largest opportunities for improving business performance, is the aligning of your sales and marketing teams. By aligning these two seemingly separate entities around a single revenue cycle, you can dramatically improve marketing ROI, sales productivity, and top-line growth. - http://bit.ly/2EO9QQN

While aligning your marketing and sales teams is the largest area of opportunity, it is also one of the most challenging. You have two different teams, with different goals, roles and expectations of each other.

Here are 5 things you can implement, to start aligning your marketing and sales teams today!

1. Replace the Sales Funnel with a Revenue Cycle

Hand over lead nurturing to the marketing team. Traditional sales funnel have the marketing team dropping out once a potential customer transitions from top of the funnel (TOFU) to middle of the funnel (MOFU). This strategy fails more often than succeeds, because today's consumers tend to educate themselves more before they shop.

Allow the handoff from marketing to sales to happen later in the cycle, and give your sales team the opportunity to evaluate a qualified potential buyer, and if they are not ready yet - the sales team can upcycle them for further nurturing.

The marketing team MUST deliver quality leads, and the sales team MUST follow up on all leads.

2. Define the Strategy Together

To start, you will want to establish lead qualification criteria. One of the best ways to do this, is by creating buyer personas. You can check out my other video - 4 Steps to Create a Buyer Persona - to learn more about doing this: http://bit.ly/2ELhf3w 

Next, you will want to set goals or create a service level agreement. This will help to set expectations. It should contain information like:

- Criteria for when a lead transitions from marketing to sales

- The timeframe for sales to follow up with a good-fit lead

- How often sales will follow up with a good-fit lead

- The criteria you have set in place for determining a good-fit lead

3. Meet Regularly

In order for marketing and sales teams to support each other, they must have a visual into the inner-happenings. The marketing team should be a part of the sales team meetings, and the sales team should have access to the marketing calendars and monthly offers. Additionally, marketing and sales team brainstorm sessions should be held regularly, to anticipate and plan.

4. Optimize Your Use of Technology

If you don't already have one, you need to put a CRM software in place. There are plenty of great ones out there, some inexpensive and simple, and some that are expensive and complicated. In utilizing a CRM, make certain that both your sales AND marketing team have access to the information and analytics collected. Not only will it help your sales team with their sales process, but the marketing team can utilize data collected to create content that targets your ideal buyer.

5. Market Your Sales Representatives

Your sales team may be extremely proficient at selling the features and benefits of your product, but your customers may be saying, "So what? Why are you qualified to tell me about it?" By establishing your sales team as thought leaders in your industry, it gives them credibility and touts their expertise - creating trust, which is essential in the sales process.

Ready to get started?

Oh…and if you need a good marketing team, that has experience working closely with your sales team, give us a call, or check us out at www.thatagency.com.

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