It’s easy to view marketing and sales as a one way street. The marketing team brings out the leads, the sales team closes the deal. But marketing and sales are, in fact, symbiotic. Functioning together can push both to greater heights, whether you’re looking to raise awareness of a product or bringing a customer to the advocacy stage. Alignment between those two groups challenges many companies, and for those companies, they need to start by finding the crucial moments for sales and marketing to function as a team.
Before The Purchase
In the customer lifecycle, prospects generally go through a few steps: becoming aware of what you’re selling, your company nurturing that interest, and them desiring to buy before sales closes the deal. To some degree, these things are what marketing departments are paid for—they raise awareness of the product and work to pinpoint the desire of every customer in their segment.
There’s no better cheerleader for your product, no better guide to its virtues, than a good sales team. Consider that the sales team is not only the most informed about the company and what it sells, but also what brings a potential customer to the table and what makes them buy. They know what they’re selling inside and out, and have real life experience about how a product can unexpectedly fill a role even the customer wouldn’t expect. They’ve got a deep understanding of just what needs the product can fill, and they can help marketing teams understand what works and what doesn’t.
Marketing teams should not only look at how sales teams are using content, but regularly speak with sales teams and ask about customer feedback. How are customers using the product? What questions are they asking before they buy? What industries are they coming from? Conversely, what makes customers choose another product? Do salespeople find themselves having to discuss different perceptions of the product? Getting a handle on this will empower marketing to develop better materials and better understand their customer base.
After The Sale
In theory, the marketing department is done after the sale. After all, the customer was made aware and bought, and the rest is now sales’ job. They take the calls, they handle customer relations, so where does marketing even fit in?
When faced with this question, it’s important to remember the customer lifecycle isn’t a straight line, but a continuous circle, and part of that is delivering the product and service that makes your customers your best advocates. Marketing can help build loyalty by developing customer-engagement strategies with the sales team, and bolster advocacy by sharing customer testimonials.
Even something as basic as retweeting a customer’s happy statement, or stepping in when they idly complain about a feature on social media, can pay enormous dividends, and marketing teams are uniquely suited to engage their customers beyond the awareness stage. When you’ve got new products on the way, your customer advocates can be your most valuable resources. There’s nothing that raises awareness like word of mouth, no more trusted method than asking your friends for advice, and as the cycle repeats, it ensures you aren’t back at square one.
Successful sales and marketing teams rely on each other in many ways, so they need to find common ground. A sales team and a marketing team working closely together will often find they’re not only working in concert, but can be each other’s best allies.
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