Well, the ultimate goal is to bring business in through the door, but some ways make it easier and ways to make it harder.
Making cold calls or sending cold emails to present products or services, expecting a good acceptance rate or leads to follow up…
probably that’s the hard way to find new business. And even with current clients, ask for meetings to present products or services… maybe there is a smoother way to get their attention.
These two business areas, marketing, and sales are complementary and not enemies.
Combining its strengths, they are a very powerful and effective tool to address the market.
Sometimes, there are overlapping activities, and it’s part of our management skills to understand what should go where and how to work with each other.
From marketing to sales
One of the main purposes of marketing is to open and smooth the way to be followed by the sales team.
Nowadays is not just about creating campaigns to generate or keep brand awareness.
Marketing can provide the 1st contact with the product/service, build up expectations and curiosity around you, and what you represent without being invasive.
These activities have to be shared with the sales team so if they are approached by clients, they are aware of what’s is going on and can address it properly.
There’s nothing worse for a client to approach the sales team about a campaign and get cold feet.
One advantage of digital marketing is the ability to reach out to thousands of people in hours, in different regions, platforms, no matter at what time of the day, and collect data to analyze.
The result of marketing campaigns are data insight and leads. How the target audience engaged with it, and how realistic was the plan of action.
That information is an extremely valuable insight to the sales team.
It will allow them to pick up and follow up hot leads generated by campaigns. Understand how the audience is perceiving the brand/product/service and adjust their strategies, as well.
All this will create a better environment for your sales team to follow up leads and contacts and close prospects.
From sales to marketing
Direct contact with clients and prospects allows the sales team to read better the need of its market and provide a proper solution.
This information is vital to the marketing team.
It provides a more accurate idea of what to target, how the audience should be adjusted, what emotions and needs should be triggered.
If properly organized these two areas are powerful together, can reduce time and effort, and pull business to another level.