Gone are the days when the marketing department and the sales department worked separately. Faced with competition in today's market, companies are increasingly interested in potential internal issues that could harm their conversion rate. One of the most common is misalignment between marketing and sales teams.

Why choose Smarketing ?

Before discussing the common mistakes that impact the coordination of your teams' sales and marketing teams, let's discover together the importance of marketing and sales alignment . In principle, company revenue increases when marketing and sales teams are synchronous. The sales cycle is reduced and conversion rates are more optimal.

 Smarketing also offers you the possibility of:

• better target and define your company’s buyer personas
• get ahead of your competitors;
• follow a clear and precise strategy;
• increase the revenue generated by the brand;
• provide full satisfaction to customers.

It turns out that B2B companies that respond immediately are 7 times more likely to communicate with decision-makers. It now remains to know how to successfully align the marketing and sales teams and implement a good Smarketing strategy. To do this, you must:

• define a common language with which the marketing and sales teams must become familiar;
• agree hard on the type of buyers personas;
• establish a lead scoring system ;
• determine the objectives to be achieved and common KPIs;
• develop relevant and sustainable content strategies;
• set each person’s missions;
• adopt an innovative set of tools and technologies;
• draw up a Marketing SLA or Service Level Agreement.

After having implemented the Smarketing strategy, you need to coordinate your teams in order to properly apply it and generate more sales.

1) Neglecting meetings of both teams: marketing and sales

In Smarketing, communication is the key to good alignment between the two teams. Not planning regular meetings would therefore be a mistake. Thanks to Smarketing meetings, marketers can keep an eye on the progress of salespeople in achieving revenue objectives. A way for them to develop new solutions if necessary. The ideal would be to organize weekly meetings to discuss processes, resources and current campaigns.

2) Not communicating

If you do not want to desynchronize your marketing and sales teams, it is essential to take stock of current actions and operations . In particular, you can create team email aliases to distribute information that both departments need to know. You can also share your editorial calendar with sales agents to keep them up to date with current promotions. Also, you can share the reports and analyzes carried out by the company to re-motivate the teams. It's up to you to choose the option that suits you best to facilitate communication between your company's marketing and sales teams

3) Not considering the importance of feedback loops

Feedback loops simplify communication between company teams. You will then be able to find quick solutions to the problems that arise. In addition to coordinating your Smarketing teams, these loops allow you to:

• share customer feedback and identify pain points throughout the purchasing journey;
• publish relevant content to attract more customers at each sales stage;
• define the type of content to create to support your salespeople in the sales enablement strategy.  

How to set up feedback loops? Smarketing meetings and by sharing a Google Sheet to gather ideas and comments/opinions left by your company's customers.

4) Not integrating salespeople into the content strategy

Keep in mind that Smarketing alignment is the process of coordinating the company's marketing and sales teams. It would therefore be senseless if you do not take care to integrate salespeople into the content strategy. Contrary to what one might believe, the content is not only aimed at Content Marketing . Salespeople also have knowledge that can help optimize the quality of your content. Make sure you exploit this area well!

In particular, you can interview them, create a Smarketing podcast give them an article to write or write for them. You are also free to notify them on your networks after publishing your content on the web. More specifically, involving salespeople in content strategy will open the doors to new knowledge channels. your company's social selling strategy

5) Not integrating the marketing team into the sales strategy

Secondly, you need to ensure that your marketers understand how salespeople sell your company's products/services

To succeed in their sales initiation, invite your marketers to:

• listen to the salesperson's telephone conversations with customers;
• observe email exchanges between the salesperson and the customer;
• to contribute to the product demonstration.

In principle, integrating marketers into sales strategies is a way to give them more ideas for creating content. It is also an effective way to optimize the company's lead nurturing /sales enablement

Forgetting to evaluate and adjust your teams is also a common mistake to avoid at the risk of desynchronizing the company's marketing and sales teams.

Also, be sure to never downplay the importance of the gathering to maintain proximity between your two teams. They will be able to know each other better and agree to adopt the best Smarketing strategy. The idea is to increase lead generation, but also your company's sales.