Sales & Marketing Pipeline Collaboration
People who don’t work in either marketing or sales may sometimes confuse the work of the two separate departments simply because they both work different parts of the customer pipeline. The marketing team’s responsibility is to create potentials, whereas the sales team closes the deal and turns consumers into customers. When something goes wrong and the bottom line isn’t where it should be, both departments generally blame each other. So how do you get these two separate but intertwined groups to play nice? Here are some strategies for creating the mutual respect necessary for measurable and successful performance in the sales and marketing departments.
First of all, your two teams need to have specifics defined for certain customer pipeline situations. What is actually considered a lead? Does the marketing team think they are providing plenty of leads, while the sales team sees only a few as valid potential customers? Think about consumer engagement. Does the sales team see how they can solicit effectively to consumers who are being engaged by various content provided through the marketing team?
This makes communication a must. Communication between the two teams to make sure that everyone is on the same page is vital, but also communication with the consumer. Consumers can get confused when the tone of the advertising team and the marketing team don’t match up. If marketing is bringing in consumers with the idea that the company is easy going and laid back, and then the sales team always goes straight for the jugular, people are going to get confused about how your company does business.
So how do you know when things are going well? It’s all about the numbers. But the bottom line doesn’t tell the whole story when it comes to marketing. So while the sales department may be more concerned about conversions (or the lack thereof), the marketing team may be excited over the number of clicks, page views, or organic web traffic they are acquiring. Both teams need to come together to agree on which metrics are important and how they will be tracked to determine if a particular campaign or strategy is successful or should be abandoned.
Finally, there needs to be some ground rules set for how the handoff works. When is a potential ready to be moved on to the sales team? When a lead doesn’t pan out, how does it make its way back to marketing for additional prep work? Which team members are customers being funneled through when they bounce back and forth between the teams? After all, once a sale is closed, now marketing has to turn that one-time customer into someone who is loyal to your brand.
Once the focus has been switched from who gets the blame to how both teams can work together to go from getting a consumer’s attention to creating a sale, revenues are sure to increase.
