Most businesses think marketing departments just make pretty pie charts, highlight statistics and write with fluffy pens. As a marketer myself, I can categorically say that is not all we do. (Ok, we do have fluffy pens.) There is so much more to marketing than meets the eye, and your sales manager needs to know about it if you want to be taken seriously.
Have a structured game plan Sit down with your sales manager and go through your game plan with them. What you want to achieve in one month, six months, one year, five years. Then give them a how-to on exactly how you plan on achieving those goals. Remember, the sales manager has a different skill set to you, so they will probably need you to explain exactly how you plan on giving the sales teams leads.
Agree on what makes a qualified lead
The biggest breakdown between sales and marketing comes when they disagree on what makes a lead "good". Marketing tend to complain that sales aren't doing enough with their leads, sales complain that marketing give them poor leads with no opportunities. Sound familiar? Tackle this head on by deciding what makes a qualified lead. Then use something like lead scoring technology to make sure you can qualify each lead that you pass through to sales.
Break down your budget for them
It's common not to talk about money between departments, but it is important for sales to understand yours. After all, if they don't report on which campaigns are getting the most converted leads, you aren't going to get the budget for it next year. Sales are much better at understanding money and how it influences results, so explain what your budget can do to influence their results and get them onboard with what you need. Anything from PPC reporting to chasing leads from the old quarter - if it's important to you, ask them to help in that area.
Use simple statistics
Just because you may use Google Analytics or another form of web reporting every day, it doesn't mean your sales manager does. Simplify your statistics by digging as deep as you can and then building your report from the individual stats up, to include everything else that is an influencing factor. Sales managers and directors often work better with numbers and statistics rather than pretty pie charts, so don't spend too much time on this. Instead, summarise the month on month results for them and how you are achieving your (and their) lead goals.
Offer them marketing tools they can take advantage of
Often, the biggest divide between sales and marketing is that sales don't see how your tools can help them. So give them tools that they can use to see lead results for themselves. For example, visitor tracking is usually a tool marketing use to help establish the correct user journey. It can be great for sales too when they want to find out exactly what their lead is interested in. They can do this with GatorLeads personalised URLs. These PURLs allow sales to track leads from their one-to-one email conversations to find out exactly what their lead is looking at on your website. From there, sales can create a tailored sales pitch around these interests and begin to appreciate the tools you offer them as marketers. For more on the perfect sales and marketing relationships check out the full content series on 'How to bridge the gap between sales and marketing'.
If you want to create the perfect synergy between sales and marketing, learn how to create an effective strategy, and plan to help bridge that gap and check out the IDM's Campaign Planning course.
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