Sales and marketing are often seen as opposing forces, when in fact, it is absolutely crucial that they are aligned. In this quick tips episode of the Powerful Marketing Tips podcast, Mari-Liis Vaher shares the 4 steps to aligning your sales and marketing activities. Find the episode transcript below.
Today I want to talk about sales & marketing. These two are notoriously unfriendly with each other. It’s like the question of an egg and chicken - which one was first? Is marketing more important or sales?
If marketing brings in leads but the sales department does not convert them - are the leads bad or is the sales process bad? Or if marketing is not bringing in enough leads, is it a matter of bad marketing, small budget, wrong target audience or something else?
It can be easy to blame one or the other for bad results. But at Powerful Marketers, we truly believe that marketing AND sales can and SHOULD be aligned, not separated.
Because what many businesses forget is that for a customer or anybody else on the outside looking in - the business is a whole. They don’t see the sales department or the marketing department or the customer service department separately.
If a customer’s experience with your business is good, they automatically like you. If the experience is bad, they blame the entire company. So, this means that you have to approach the entire client journey process as a whole. And for that, we have created the Client Journey Flywheel at Powerful Marketers.
It is a 4-step process:
The first step to aligning your marketing & service is understanding that for a customer, it all starts with marketing - so in this phase it is all about providing information about your product or service.
Once you’ve generated enough interest, the customer moves to the second phase which is service & sales. This is where it is important to help the customer find the best solution, and not “force the sale”.
Moving on, the third step to aligning marketing & sales is good follow-up - check in with your customers, ask for feedback, referrals and their opinion in general. People really appreciate when you go for them for advice, it makes them feel valued and they want to return to you in the future. After all, it is about 7 times more cost-effective to sell to a repeat customer than to acquire new customers.
And this takes us to the fourth step on the Client Journey Flywheel which is improvements based on the feedback that you received in the previous step. And with the improved product or service, the cycle continues with marketing… and on and on it goes. 🙂
Also, this 4-step process to aligning your sales & marketing is the basis for the most important metrics:
Starting with marketing - you need to know where your leads come from and how much it costs for you to acquire them.
In the second step, sales, you need to know how many of your leads convert into sales and how much revenue do they create for you compared to the cost you had to make to acquire them.
In the third step - follow-up - it is all about retention, so metrics like repeat purchases, but also “softer” metrics like clicks in the newsletter or engagement on social media.
The fourth step - improvements - is all about analyzing your data and making necessary adjustments. For example, if you see that one marketing channel does not really bring in any traffic or leads, then it may be wise to focus your energy somewhere else.
So just create a simple spreadsheet with key metrics and start combining your metrics from marketing and sales to see the big picture of your business.