5 tools every SMarketer should be using

In every Business, each department has its own areas of expertise, but it’s essential for every department to work in collaboration and increase productivity to attain one ultimate goal of the organization they are working for and that is “Team Revenue”. Otherwise, not co-operating with other departments can harm business to accomplish its goals.

Sales and marketing both are two halves of the same team. It’s important to align both teams around one goal, which is generating revenue. In 2010 a study by the Aberdeen Group shows that, companies with strong sales and marketing alignment get 20% annual revenue growth. To more reach business goals more effectively and efficiently, a strong communication bonding between sales and marketing team is needed to resolve the conflicts between both department, and generating more qualified leads and customers.

The key five tools which should be used to integrate SMarketing into a business are:

1.     Speak the same language:

Marketers put great number of efforts in marketing campaigns to add value to their product and services for customers, but when it comes to sales team, the marketing team claim that their efforts are not on revenue, because they never heard back if they were good or not.  Sales and marketing team should come up with a turnkey, through which they measure progress of their efforts in a weekly meeting and get on the same page to get fruitful results with their efforts. Keeping in mind the information they are getting from their prospects about the product and services.

2.     Closed loop reporting:

Sales and marketing team should track the progress of sales and marketing process. Measure the marketing efforts and analyzing leads behavior on the website and analyzing the insights of target audience. And share these analyses with the sales team to help them convert that lead into a customer. Tracking the success of a particular prospect from marketing process to closing the sales will ensure that you are putting your sales and marketing efforts in right direction and getting sufficient return on investment.

3.     Service level agreement (SLA):

An SLA defines that what steps should be taken by the sales team to nurture marketing team in the areas where they are lacking and marketing team supplies right information about the leads to sales team to help them convert leads into happy customers through the buyer’s journey. This all is done to reach desired company goals and objectives, in order to get the leads to close certain number of sales. It will help sales team to make a best offer, but it will also be beneficial to attract more leads into customers without spending more money and efforts in marketing. This sales and marketing team relationship delight your customers in a way to convert them into promoters of your business.

4.     Communication between sales and marketing:

All members of sales and marketing team should work together and set meetings to have an open communication process and get all the required information about the sales and marketing activities and plans regarding products and services, and to come up with adding value to its sales and marketing process to boost the low graded leads and to get the desired benefits from the existing customers and what steps should be taken for their retention.

5.     Rely on data:

A common sales and marketing dashboard should be created to track the statistics and to make monthly reports of sales and marketing progression to analyze what is working and what’s not. Whether the marketing process is deriving right traffic to the website, converting into leads and how those leads are being managed by the sales team to convert them into customers. Use these reports to compare the progress with previous month’s goals. The data you use should be real time statistics and crystal clear to share across the company. If anything is going wrong to achieve the desired goals, always use data to rectify and sort out the obstructions to be successful with the marketing and sales goals.

Conclusion:

 

The conclusive aim of aligning the sales and marketing team around one goal is to brain storm the ideas to take the sales at higher level. Empowering the marketing team, By providing them the required guidelines about the product and services, customers experiences. what kind of feedback the sales team getting from them, so the marketing team can take steps and implement the required adjustments to boost up sales and marketing process for customer satisfaction and to get maximum ROI

Click to read this article about Modern Marketing Process.  you can also read about Goals of Customer Relationship Management .