How can a brilliant marketing campaign fall short in the end?
Consider the example of a company whose marketing team launches a bold, ambitious campaign targeting a new market. They introduce the brand with a flood of carefully crafted and targeted messaging in a variety of mediums. Their work is intelligent, creative and expertly produced. And yet the results are only OK, nothing to celebrate.
All because the marketing team didn’t coordinate with their sales team
The sales team didn’t know the specifics of the marketing team’s efforts -- the how, when, what and why of it -- so they had no idea how to build on it and use it with prospective customers. They had no input in the process, so their needs and insights played no part in the development of the campaign. They were in the dark.
If your marketing and sales teams are operating in their own worlds -- instead of in the same one -- then they will never be as effective as they can be. In fact, they may even undermine each other. If your sales team can’t capitalize on your marketing team’s great campaign, then it really wasn’t a great campaign.
Fryed Egg Productions can work with your organization to create a tight, highly effective bond between your sales and marketing teams, aligning them so that they are stronger together than they ever would have been apart.
An organization divided
Many obstacles can keep sales and marketing teams from alignment. It almost always starts at the top. Leadership at misaligned companies views sales and marketing as separate groups with distinct goals and responsibilities, failing to recognize how much they should overlap and support each other. In that way, they let bad habits and processes develop. Poor communication becomes the rule between the departments, including failing to share data and other invaluable information about the customers each group is targeting. Some sales and marketing teams use completely different metrics, meaning they essentially are measuring in different languages.
Making each other better
Fortunately, aligning sales and marketing doesn’t require complex planning and headaches. They’re a natural pair who belong together. Sales can bring frontline intelligence about your audience to bolster marketing’s efforts, while marketing has big-picture insight that will help sales staff trying to convert prospective customers. Sales can tell marketing about what’s working or not working and how people are responding on the front lines to messaging. Marketing can share messaging and other assets that sales staff can employ to strengthen their pitch. When the teams share a productive working relationship, they can be open and constructive and work together to find better solutions. Sales teams can share their insight when marketing prepares campaigns and projects, and marketing can provide support when sales looks to convert prospects into customers.
Collaborative, not competitive
With guidance and incentives from leadership, the departments should view each other as one big team, not separate entities competing for resources and approval. In unhealthy organizations, sales and marketing teams hoard information rather than share it. Put processes in place so that everyone will view their goals as aligned. Create open lines of communication with regularly scheduled meetings between the respective departments, including both staff members and leadership, as well as organizing special sessions for unique or pressing topics. Use an internal collaboration digital platform that allows the easy sharing of information and ideas. Integrate members of each department into interdepartmental teams that collaborate on projects, such as customer-facing content.
At Fryed Egg, we help organizations build brands that resonate and lead to meaningful results. If you want to see if Fryed Egg is the right agency for your marketing needs, contact us at (813) 478-0494 or [email protected] or visit www.FryedEgg.com.