Understanding customers Any company that wants to be successful must ensure that it provides its customers with the best possible customer experience ; but how would it be possible to achieve this goal without having a complete understanding of consumer needs and behaviors? Fortunately, this is precisely one of the benefits of collaborating between sales and marketing. The two departments interact with customers in different situations and ways, therefore obtaining different information on them: marketing has a more complete view of consumer behavior, while sales has a better personal knowledge of them, thanks to direct contact. Data sharing and merging derived from the two groups, allows them to gain a better understanding of consumers, thus facilitating the creation of more accurate buyer personas. As a direct consequence, it becomes easier: establish effective communication; select the most suitable content for each potential customer throughout the entire buying process; smooth the transition from marketing to sales. The arrival point? Happy and loyal customers to the company. More qualified leads Companies characterized by a correct alignment between the sales and marketing departments favor internal communication with the intention of having an overview of the entire customer acquisition process . This allows you to resolve the element of greatest conflict between the sales and marketing teams: lead qualification. This avoids typical problems such as: the impossibility of identifying the responsibilities for a failure to achieve the objectives; the sacrifice of lead quality in favor of quantity. The collaboration between the two departments makes it possible to agree on the parameters that define a lead as “qualified”, so that each group has clear indications to follow in the lead generation process . The sales department therefore finds itself managing exactly the contacts with which it would like to interact and can concentrate its efforts exclusively on them, improving efficiency and decreasing response times; the marketing team, on the other hand, can focus on creating the best content for each prospect. A two-way flow of leads is also structured which allows those who are not fully ready to proceed with the purchase to be reassigned to the marketing team, thus resuming the nurturing process without definitively abandoning potential customers. If you’re interested in a more detailed description of how leads are qualified, visit our article “ Classifying Leads in the Sales Process ”. Feedback management Having a solid relationship between the sales and marketing departments ensures smooth and continuous communication between them, allowing both teams to be constantly updated on each other’s progress and on any problems. Each department can also provide the other with useful suggestions to improve the entire customer acquisition process, thanks to the sharing of feedback received from the contacts with whom it interacts. In this way, the weak points and the strong points are highlighted, so that it is possible to modify the company strategies to better relate with one’s own audience. The collection and subsequent processing of feedback is further facilitated by the use of a software Customer Relationship Management ( CRM ) in common, an indispensable tool for any company that wants to achieve full alignment between the two departments. Business strategy The times in which each department continued with blinders on its own path and focused only on achieving its objectives, ignoring the damage it caused to the company’s lead generation process, will seem long gone. In modern companies, sales and marketing become part of a single entity that aims at a single goal: to increase revenues. Both groups are therefore willing to help each other as the success of one matches the success of the other. The sharing of objectives allows the company not to spend too much on the details of managing internal conflicting relationships, so that it can focus on the business strategy and obtain greater value in the long term. Team collaboration A fundamental element of companies with aligned sales and marketing departments is open and continuous communication . This implies that the teams are constantly in contact with each other and have the opportunity to strengthen their bond from time to time. The underlying idea must be to achieve full mutual trust , which allows each member to feel comfortable asking for opinions or even help from colleagues in the other department. Over time, a goal is reached that every company should aim for: the creation of a corporate climate much more pleasant. In fact, it positively affects the happiness of employees and consequently their productivity. It is also an excellent opportunity to improve the corporate brand image and attract new talent. After all, who doesn’t always want to work in a positive environment? Increase in revenues Last but not least , the ultimate goal of all (or almost all) companies: to generate revenue . We wouldn’t be here talking about alignment between sales and marketing if it didn’t have an effective impact on the growth of corporate revenues. All the benefits listed so far help to achieve this goal, which however deserves to be treated separately to highlight the importance of cooperation between sales and marketing. Research indicates results well beyond expectations: on average, you get a 32% increase in revenue year-over-year. Much of the credit goes to the greater efficiency that is generated in the entire customer acquisition process and to the trust that the company inspires in consumers. In fact, according to studies, the alignment between the two departments results in an average 36% growth in customer retention rates. How much can it affect costs? Attracting a new prospect can be up to seven times more expensive than retaining an existing one: the benefit in terms of efficiency is easy to understand.