It's time for Sales and Marketing to start sharing

SMARKETING: It’s time for Sales and Marketing to start sharing.

As ABM usage (Account Based Marketing) rises, there has never been a more essential time to align your sales and marketing teams. ABM is the process of selecting key defined accounts to target, rather than creating campaigns that are aimed at a broad range of prospects. To be successfully implemented, ABM needs sales and marketing teams to align and work together with the aim of delivering the ultimate customer experience. We already have the technology and data available to make this happen, the question isn’t whether we should do it, it is HOW WE DO IT.

Target the same audience, share data sets

Sales and marketing see their target audiences in different ways - this disconnect means that they miss out on opportunities to connect with promising prospects. If you are not speaking to the same audience, then the initial customer experience fails, and the buyer no longer sees you as a trusted source. The teams need to meet in the middle by planning the campaign phase, the communication phase and the execution phase as one team. This phase is where the teams learn about their audience, and requires sharing both data sets. Looking at the same, shared data sets, gives an overall shared vision of the target buyer. The teams should together build and share a full view of prospects. With their audiences aligned, opportunities for stronger connections are increased as sales teams can connect with more prospects, and marketers can strengthen that connection.

What could help here?

• Build a lead-nurturing journey together
• Segment leads into cold, warm, pre-qualified and qualified
• Derive the needed processes for it to be in place
• Understand and work together on the right content hook in each phase of your target audience

Understanding the buyer, share mind sets

Collaboration is more than sharing a dataset, it requires the same mindset and understanding your customers so that you can deliver tightly coordinated messages. Buyer behaviour is shifting but now we have technologies that make their buying activities more measurable. This means that we have the ability to deliver customised experiences from the beginning through our shared data sets but also through our understanding of that data. 

What needs to be set out:

• Who engages, where, when and with what content
• How many touchpoints your target buyer has before you approach them personally
• Create and produce personal messages that could be used by sales team members to engage with leads

This information paves the way for how to distribute to these prospects, for higher conversion and win rates. Both teams will gather knowledge as they observe and engage with prospects, it is the understanding and sharing of that customer intelligence that puts them a step closer to higher conversion rates.

Engage through the buyer journey, share intentions

For an effective ‘SMarketing’ team, the intentions and company goals need to align. In this case, the aim is to get to a stage of building a relationship with key decision makers and eventually turning them into leads.  

How to do this?

• Engage with prospects throughout the buyer journey
• Place and deliver personalised interactions with potential buyers
• Bind prospects to an exclusive digital community
• Include prospects with product launches, or product testing

Prospects want to go through a buying journey, not a funnel and not a pipeline. Buyers have changed, and in order to meet their expectations of a smooth, personalised buying experience marketing and sales need to join together. Sharing data, mindset and intentions is the first step in the process for a smooth transition to a successful SMarketing (sales and marketing) strategy. A joint effort, and smooth journey can only result in more and more revenue generated.

Want to know more about how to create a collaborative journey in sales and marketing? Get in touch.