Silos Kill: Don’t Let Your Sales and Marketing Operate Separately

Quick quiz: Are too many leaks in the sales cycle bogging down your business? Do you stay aloof from topics such as segmentation and positioning? Does the process of lead generation and sales closure belong in different departments?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you might need better integration between your sales and marketing operations.

With customer expectations soaring, you can no longer rely on haphazard methods of gathering leads and close deals. You need proper segmentation and integration with marketing.

Why You Need Integrated Sales and Marketing

1. No misalignment

Even after gaining knowledge that sales and marketing are not two separate functions and have to work in tandem to achieve better results, many companies fall prey to obsolete methods of lead generation. Rather than working together, the teams work in isolation with less accountability and more time going down the drain.

The integration of sales and marketing automation keeps the teams perfectly aligned on the three prongs of common goals, consistent messaging and accountability.

2. No data spills

Constant engagement of prospects need not result in data spills and distorted sales process. A seamless integration of the functions and use of an all-in-one CRM tool helps you to plug-in data leaks. This enables you to know the full cycle of lead qualification process.

Marketing automation has to wear dual hats of mirroring your thought process in campaigns and milestones without overlooking the behavioral traits of the customers – right from the moment they land on your website to becoming a customer.

3. Nuanced nurture cycles

Lead scoring should be based on both manual and automatic process. The hottest leads can be tracked using behavior based reports. Take this lead score into account to initiate a sales call.

Embrace responsive campaigns using drip marketing and tag-based segmentation. Or else, you will miss the bus to grab potential customers. Also track the response to see how the campaigns are performing in certain segments.

This also gives an easy way to measure ROI with actionable insights from the prospect visiting the website, spending some time checking different sections and, finally, signing up for a free trial.

4. Comprehensive customer views

No matter how many big deals you have in the pipeline, the sales process won’t gain speed unless there is a collective effort from sales and marketing. The key is to get to the specifics of number of visitors, present customers and hot leads.

Once you get a complete view of your customer from the CRM’s contact page, you can carry those insights for cross-selling and up-selling of your products. When you close a deal, the next trigger in the sales process has to be an upgrade.

Customer service is not an alienated function as you can integrate that into CRM. A unified CRM with a help desk offering can be a better gambit for SMBs.

5. Get actionable insights and alerts

Integrating sales and marketing is like giving the sales reps all the next-gen killer tools that enables better sales closures. They are geared up to engage and nurture the prospect at every touch point. Also get more from your lead scoring activity so that you don’t miss out on hot leads.

Real-time notifications help you move closer to your leads by calling them at the right time and also giving insights on what the conversation should be and how long should it last. That makes it like a walk in the park.

A unified approach to sales and marketing and a seamless integration of the two helps businesses be more efficient and successful. Simply put, SMBs can’t afford to make separate silos out of their sales and marketing efforts.