Joined Up Sales And Marketing – Part 2
We're looking at how to join up sales and marketing activities for the Revenue Era. As we discussed in part 1, the Revenue Era is the post-pandemic period where sales and marketing teams align their goals towards driving revenue, choosing the tools, methods and products that work best for that industry and the internal architecture of the organisation (as well as external contractors which function as a scaffold).
Part of the drive towards this new era can be linked back to the pandemic and how we were forced to find new ways of working. It seems counterintuitive, but the more physical distance was put between colleagues, the more meaningful contact they had with each other. Now that no-one was out on a road trip, sales demo or running a stand at a trade show there was more availability to co-operate. Flexible working hours meant that teams who previously struggled to get everyone together for a meeting were able to collaborate in a way they had not done before.
This collaborative style of working bridged the gap between sales and marketing activities and fostered a new exchange of ideas, of tech and tools, and of goals. Now, responsibilities can be assigned to the individual with the best ability or knowledge rather than by sticking rigidly to job titles, and by sharing and reallocating certain tasks to sales from marketing, and vice versa, a better understanding can be reached between the two teams.
When the sales team know what the marketing team is planning they can give their input, while the marketing team can monitor sales activities to know when to provide more content, or advise on a case study that might swing the deal. Even better, when responsibility for sales and marketing activities is shared between two departments, more action will be taken with more eyes on the prize. There is a danger that some tasks could slip between the cracks, so having a strong project manager running things is vital in large organisations.
Communication is always key, but in this Revenue Era it is part of the driving force behind this way of working. Companies were forced to use virtual project collaboration tools and as a result of a greater demand, there's now a better supply of tools with many more features. Necessity certainly is the mother of invention and without the demand of the pandemic we may have been waiting for two or three more years to get the kind of advanced remote working software we have now.
In order to effectively use these tools and capitalise on Revenue Era marketing styles, common goals must be agreed between the two teams. In person and virtual meetings are still the best ground from which to grow goals, but ensure that key stakeholders from sales, marketing, account management and even product development are involved at this stage.
Having salespeople working from home or on the road doesn't impede this style of working, and neither does outsourcing some or all of your sales and marketing to an external agency like us. Using this collaborative style of working and treating sales and marketing as a single team (despite geographic or even time zone differences) works really well – we've been doing it for years already. Slack, WhatsApp, whatever you use, these online and mobile channels foster a sense of shared ownership of all activities.
Simply put, when the sales and marketing teams are working as one unit they can achieve much more, in a more productive way. As a marketing team, Parua brings the expertise and the experience of working remotely with all types of businesses in an effective way. Going back to the construction analogy, we are the scaffolding that supports the sales teams (and others) within your organisation to align all activities towards the common goal of increasing revenue.
If your sales and marketing activities need unification, or you want to work more effectively with the structures you already have, give Parua a call and let us join up your sales and marketing to create money in the bank.
