Combining sales and marketing: 3 best practices for more joint success through smarketing

In his guest article for matelso, Mario Bartels from the management consultancy Alinea & Company shows how B2B companies in particular can optimize sales success by efficiently linking their marketing and sales departments. The result: more relevant leads, a potentially higher closing rate and therefore more turnover. The magic word is smarketing (sales marketing). The motto is: sales and marketing together for the success of a company.

The desire for targeted collaboration between marketing and sales is neither new nor a phenomenon of individual companies or sectors. 87% of managers agree that collaboration is crucial to the success of a company’s growth. However, as with many endeavors, implementation fails. Only 39% of sales employees state that they actually work together with marketing. In terms of customer centricity, marketing & sales effectiveness and agility, collaboration across departmental silos is becoming increasingly important.

Smarketing (also known as sales marketing) refers to all activities that are geared towards a stronger link between marketing and sales in real time. The aim is always to make the sale of services and products easier, faster and better. The focus should always be on the customer – customer centricity is king. Successful sales marketing strategies focus on the following areas: Inbound Marketing & Lead Generation, Inbound Sales, Customer Experience and Customer Success. Bringing both departments closer together is the key to optimized customer acquisition.

An increasing number of (digital) channels and interaction points meet changing customer needs and expectations, which means that the customer journey is becoming ever more complex. In addition, many companies, especially in B2B, are faced with increasing budget pressure from their customers, which makes purchasing decisions much more sensitive.

Companies can differentiate themselves if they identify and understand the needs and behavioral patterns of their potential customers along the complex journey and translate them into customer-centric solutions. This only works smoothly if marketing and sales work together to address this challenge. Those who can transparently link the multitude of customer data will be able to turn initial marketing leads (MQLs) into real customers – and thus increase sales success. In order to achieve this and successfully combine sales and marketing, digital communication and lead management platforms at the interface between the two departments offer the opportunity to create end-to-end digital processes and thus break down customer data silos. One example of such systems is the matelso platform.

The increased complexity along the customer journey is often accompanied by a high level of complexity within companies. Particularly in large marketing and sales teams, the focus on the customer is often lost due to confusing organizational structures across the entire company.

Closer integration between the two often structurally separate areas can be created as a first step by defining and implementing common goals and KPIs with regard to market cultivation. This also requires a communication routine, which is important to ensure the flow of information between the two business areas. Only through a transparent exchange can sales, for example, reflect to marketing which sales-supporting materials and tools marketing should provide in order to drive joint success as an enabler. The goal: to effectively form a real team between Sales and Marketing.

The speed of change on the market and customer side is faster than ever before. Identifying these changes and addressing them in a timely manner is by no means easy. The challenge is often not the availability of market and customer data, but rather the efficient translation of this data into implications and actionable insights for products, solutions and market development. To ensure an appropriate response speed and thus remain competitive, corporate decision-makers must develop and implement consistent coordination routines that successfully connect both teams in order to fill the sales funnel sustainably. Joint agile cycles have proven their worth here in order to determine, validate and implement hypothesis-based adjustment potential between the sales and marketing departments on the basis of an identified need for action.

Targeted, successful collaboration between marketing and sales is and remains a success factor for growth. The fact that only just over a third of sales staff work together with marketing at all shows how big the implementation hurdles often are to coordinating with one another. Jointly defined goals are the first step towards breaking down silos and ensuring collaborative market development. Data-driven transparency about customer and market developments helps Marketing & Sales to ensure relevance in changing markets and thus work together to remain competitive.