Marketing and Sales: enemies or friends?

Within a company, marketing and sales are two of the most important business functions for business development and growth. For this reason it would be natural to think that these two teams work in harmony and close collaboration, yet this is not the case. In many companies , sales and marketing are separate departments , which have no opportunity to interact with each other. Although the final objective of the two departments is common , the specific objectives of each function, the activities carried out, the tools used and the languages ​​adopted create a gap between marketing and sales , which is difficult to fill. Sales cycle in the B2B context: the marketing and sales path The days when leads were captured and immediately passed on to sales are over. Contact between salesperson and customer always takes place later , when the customer has already collected the information he needed. It’s marketing that plays the most important game : leads need time to gather information and get a sense of who the company is and what they offer. In this information path, marketing has the task of “nourishing/cultivating” the lead and does so through an activity called lead nurturing ; this consists of offering each lead a series of contents – articles, white papers, ebooks, webinars, videos – which seek to answer the questions that arise at each stage of the purchasing process. At the end of this phase, which can last several months, the leads are ready to have contact with a salesperson. From this point on , the ball is passed to the salesperson , who will have the task of transforming the lead into a customer . Why salespeople and marketers need to be aligned? So… are marketing and sales enemies or friends? It is clear that, for the process just outlined, marketing and sales must be great friends and must be aligned , even if only to define together which characteristics the lead ready to be assigned must have. Marketers can bring great economic benefits through a new way of doing marketing and communication, to always stay on the customer’s radar, using specific contents on the website and distributed with newsletters and on social media. And the commercials must learn to be more social , building an active role in the search and distribution of useful content to their customers , because only they know in detail the expectations and challenges that the customer has to face, its history and its methods operational, precisely to gain an advantage in the commercial action and to be recognized as experts in the sector. Furthermore, let’s not forget that today the experience that a company gives to the customer or lead is increasingly important . In order for it to be consistent and extremely positive , there can be no division and detachment between the activities of the marketing and sales teams. Marketing and sales in OpenSymbol In OpenSymbol our marketing and sales teams are very close-knit, so much so that they are often considered as a single entity . Collaboration and alignment are the watchwords . We have a periodic meeting about every 3 weeks , which is very useful for updating each other on the progress of the campaigns and ongoing negotiations. We also take the opportunity to plan future strategies and actions in line with the objectives we have set ourselves. The important aspect is that all decisions are made together , with a clear and shared vision of all the activities of both teams. This cooperation is not limited to just a periodic meeting, it is the glue of our daily activities . It often happens that we discuss the decisions and activities of one or the other and the advice and suggestions that arise from this are fundamental for the success of all our business activities. And, to strike a spear in our favor, collaborating wouldn’t be so easy without the help of our CRM, where all the information is reported and shared between us.