The sales and marketing teams in an organization play a valuable role in contributing to the overall profit figures and productivity. Effective alignment of the sales and marketing departments is essential to achieve the desired long-term growth. While the marketing team helps the company in lead generation, the sales team helps in converting these leads into buying customers. However, in most companies, there is a misalignment in the sales and marketing teams, resulting in wastage of leads and lower profitability.
Now the question arises that why is the alignment of the sales and marketing departments so important? Complementary sales and marketing goals help in improving customer lifecycle. The objective is to provide a seamless customer journey, thereby retaining more customers and closing more sales. If sales and marketing activities are disjointed, a large amount of the leads sent by the marketing team to the sales team get wasted. By aligning these teams, organizations can not only convert more prospects but also provide a customized experience to the customers. Additionally, sales and marketing alignment ensure shorter sales cycles and targeted marketing campaigns.
According to a study by Aberdeen Group, companies that have strong marketing and sales alignment hit 20% annual revenue growth. Your sales and marketing teams can be easily aligned with the help of marketing automation and the transparency between the two departments can be boosted. Here are some ways how marketing automation software helps in sales and marketing alignment:
1. Set a lifecycle stage – Setting a lifecycle stage is essential in understanding which stage your prospect is in the buying process and what needs to be done to motivate the prospect to complete the sale. This helps marketing and sales departments identify marketing-qualified leads (MQLs) and sales-qualified leads (SQLs) respectively. Marketing automation software can rank your customers and assign scores based on the actions they take on your website. This helps in defining MQLs which can then be communicated to the sales team. Once the sales team identify their SQLs, they can work on converting the same.
2. Identify revenue generating channels – Most organizations invest in multiple online channels to obtain more customers and profits. While it is a good idea to invest in several channels, it is also equally important to track which channels are generating maximum revenue. Marketing automation software can easily track the success rates of each and every type of online channel and identify the most profitable channels. By identifying your maximum revenue generating channels, the sales team can concentrate on increasing efforts on these channels, thereby boosting profit figures. Additionally, marketing departments can optimize the budget assigned to various marketing channels and campaigns, helping in cutting costs and driving revenue. At Telloquent, our experienced marketing automation team continuously track each and every communication channel in order to understand the degree of revenue generation of each channel. Once the revenue generating channels are identified, the same is communicated to our sales and marketing departments, based upon which we develop our sales and marketing campaigns.
3. Internal messages to the sales team – Effective sales and marketing alignment depends upon quick and transparent communication between the two teams. Responding to and getting in touch with customers quickly is essential in closing more sales. This is where marketing automation comes in. One of the major features of marketing automation is lead scoring. With lead scoring, marketers can understand which stage a prospect is occupying in the customer lifecycle process. At Telloquent, as soon as a prospect reaches the threshold value, a message is sent by our marketing team to our sales team via the marketing automation software. Based on this notification, our sales team quickly closes sales by contacting the customer. Marketing automation software accelerates the internal communication process by automating everything.
4. Personalized Content Journeys – The marketing process can be made more targeted with the help of personalized content journeys. Marketing automation helps in creating customized content based on the lead profiles. Once you use your marketing automation software to identify personal preferences of your leads and create personalized content journeys, the same can be communicated to the sales team. The sales team, when closing the sale, can use this information to offer a customized and superior experience to the customers. At Telloquent, we ensure that we offer personalized services to all our clients, guaranteeing customer satisfaction. We take personalization to the next level and this is possible with the help of our marketing automation software. Without marketing and sales alignment, profit figures and revenue numbers will remain stagnant. Marketing automation can help in seamlessly integrating marketing and sales goals, thereby ensuring proper usage of leads, increased efficiency and improved ROI. Marketing automation is also very helpful in customer retention. Read on to find out how.