The goal of most companies is to attract as many people to their business in order to turn them into loyal paying customers. However, a lot of companies struggle with sales and marketing strategy alignment. When sales and marketing teams are unable to communicate effectively, they tend to compete with each other, which can have a negative impact on your bottom line. To avoid this issue, you should try to get them to cooperate as much as possible. Sales and marketing teams traditionally work in an information silo. Both teams would work on their own without much concern for the other. This is, however, not an optimal way of doing things. As we’ve said, if possible, you should aim to align these two elements of your business. To help you with this we are going to talk about how to align your sales and marketing strategies.
1. Make sure everyone is on the same page
If you are trying to advertise a moving company, it can really be hard to align your sales and marketing strategies. The reason for this is that moving companies don’t have a lot of crossover between marketing and sales. However, this alone does not justify ignoring the importance of a well-designed system for ensuring strategic alignment. The first step in addressing misalignment is explicitly acknowledging that everyone is working toward the same goal. Your whole team needs to agree on business outcomes, whether it is investing in new equipment or increasing the area your moving company covers.
The main reason why you need to be as transparent as possible is that different teams have so-called “blind spots”. Most teams will look at their own objectives without thinking of the pipeline as a whole. when it comes to their own operations – Marketing teams are mostly concerned with things such as the number of leads produced and how to get more moving jobs, while sales are more focused on interacting with clients and closing the deal. On the other hand, if you force these two teams to work towards the same goal, you will be able to mitigate the issues that can come from misalignment.
2. Prioritize cooperation
No matter what you do, if the leaders of the two teams don’t cooperate, success is not going to be possible. Instead, sales and marketing executives should collaborate to understand where the market is, what customers need most right now, and how your service can solve these needs. Making sure that the sales and marketing teams work in the same space can help you a lot with this. Having everyone present in the same space, whether it’s physical or digital, promotes more open and lively discussions, as well as interaction. It also reduces uncertainty and assures your teams are working toward the previously established common objectives.
3. Allow space for compromise
There has always been a reason why marketing and sales are traditionally two different teams. As previously mentioned, the sales team’s responsibility is to communicate with clients, whereas the marketing team’s responsibility is to acquire new ones. That being said, occasionally it will not be feasible to do both. This is when compromise becomes necessary. In some circumstances, you must be able to prioritize sales over marketing or marketing over sales. If your marketing and sales teams can accept this, alignment will be much simpler to achieve.
4. Use technology that brings the two teams together
When your teams use different systems, it’s easy for them to lose track of one another. When your teams store sales and marketing data in separate systems, it can be difficult for them to communicate effectively. More precisely, the time required for your teams to exchange information will be significantly longer. If this happens, you run the risk of missing out on opportunities for planning, upselling, and possibly even pivoting. A good way to combat this is to develop a single system that both teams can collaborate on and benefit from. For a moving company, this can be something as simple as a moving calculator. This is one of the best ways how to align your sales and marketing.
What causes sales and marketing incompatibility?
- Lack of comprehension – Sales teams often assume that marketers are unaware of their client’s true requirements. In response, marketing teams believe that sales teams only comprehend their present customers and are unaware of the bigger, ever-changing market. You need to consider both of these viewpoints. That being said, providing opportunities for information exchange improves everyone’s chances of success.
- Funding competition – There is no such thing as an infinite budget. Sales and marketing often feel as though they are competing for resources and recognition. As a result, each team feels that their department is a better investment and that there can be only one winner.
- A difference in priorities – Do your two teams disagree on which items to promote or whom to promote them to? For example, does your marketing staff prefer to generate new leads, but your sales team prioritizes establishing connections with current customers? Diverse priorities squander time and resources while also causing dissatisfaction for your company and its consumers.
- Inadequate timing – It is possible for your marketing strategy to generate demand for a product that your sales strategy is unable to follow. Furthermore, your marketing team may overlook seasonal variations that only your sales team is aware of. If this happens, it can cause a lot of problems between the two teams.
Conclusion
Now that you have an idea of how to align your sales and marketing strategies, you can start to run your moving business much more efficiently. This will not only make finding new clients easier, but it will also allow you to have more of them. Alignment between these two teams is a win-win situation, even if it is difficult to achieve.
