The Relationship Between Sales & Marketing to Grow Your Business
When it comes to growing your business, both sales and marketing are important pieces to get right. Strategy is important here, as the strategy you use can make or break your business,
While sales and marketing are two different things, their relationship with each other can help boost business, and keep a cohesive feel to your brand. This consistency helps to maintain trust and loyalty from your customers, keeping them coming back for more.
Both departments deal with strategy, and both are necessary for a healthy business. These areas need to be in alignment with your processes, your product or service offering, and each other.
What is The Purpose of Marketing?
Marketing deals with the development of your business’ strategy. It's purpose is to draw in potential leads based on strategies to reach your target audience.
The job of the marketing team is to develop these strategies based on research, and to analyze the success of these strategies based on metrics.
Who is your ideal customer? Who are you trying to reach? And how are you going to reach them? The purpose of marketing is to answer these questions. When your business is in front of it's intended audience, and it resonates with them, you’ll have more leads and more sales conversions.
What kinds of messages are you communicating, and what does your company look and feel like as an experience for others? Marketing tends to cast the widest net for your company. For it to be successful it will need a comprehensive understanding of the other parts of your business so it can accurately set expectations, and communicate clearly to your audience in authentic ways.
What is The Purpose of Sales?
The purpose of sales is to help bring these strategies to life. It guides leads through the process of understanding your product, and deciding whether or not to buy.
Sales is the process where revenue is generated for your company. It’s vital for your business’ success to have a strong sales team. They are the ones who represent the value of your product or service offering, and help people get clear on what to expect and to make sure what you offer meets their needs.
Sales is the lifeblood of a company, and even when you are a small business knowing how to navigate a pricing conversation, and to share and address concerns through the sales process is very important.
How Do Marketing and Sales Grow Your Business?
Both marketing and sales are helpful to growing your business. Marketing helps spread awareness of your products or services , and sales is the door to delivering the products and services to your customers. These are essential for developing a healthy and profitable business
Marketing encompasses everything from content to advertisements, to lead gen, to website SEO, to branding and social media. Most of the time, when you discover a business online it is because of the marketing efforts that have been made to promote that business. If people aren’t aware your business exists, they won’t be able to buy your products. This is why marketing is so impactful, and many businesses forget they need to actively and consistently communicate with their current audience/customers and potential customers.
Sales takes all the inquiries that come from marketing, and they screen these leads, have conversations, address concerns, and work to see if it is the right fit between your company and your potential customer.Sales most always will include going through a decision matrix, and making sure that your product meets their needs, and you can count on the fact that you will need to talk about pricing, value, and benefits.
Marketing gets people to the door, sales invites people into your business with the goal of getting a yes, and quality products and service offerings help them stay there engaging and working with your business.
By implementing excellent customer service skills, and helping people discover the options best suited for them, you can generate a lot of credibility and trust in your brand, attracting even more sales.
Why Should Sales and Marketing Be On the Same Page?
Because sales and marketing are usually run by different people, it can be difficult to keep the message of the brand cohesive. Sometimes, these two departments simply aren’t on the same page, and that can confuse and repel your target market.
To prevent this, everyone needs to understand the core goals and values of the business, and know what is expected on both teams. In this way, it will be a seamless transition from marketing to sales, leading to a positive customer journey.
Because marketing draws in leads and sales converts them, you want the process to be seamless. Think of a race where the runners pass a baton halfway through. Each runner is different and runs different sections of the track, but both are needed to complete the race. And the race can’t be won unless the baton is passed successfully from one person to another.
Both components are important to grow your business, but only when your whole team is aligned in your strategies and processes will you see a huge increase in relevant leads and conversions.
This is why it is important to make sure your marketing is aligned with every aspect of your business, it will help you convert more leads to customers, and more customers into top fans.
What if They’re Not on the Same Page?
Both of these components are important, but what’s most important is the integrity and vision of your company. In order to maintain this vision, everyone needs to remember their roles and execute them well. If you are managing both sales and marketing, if your sales aren’t converting there may be some work you need to do in your messaging, and if you have plenty of leads but they aren’t saying yes, you might need to look at how you are selling, and if there is a better way to approach the conversation.
When there’s a disconnect, it’s essential to figure out what the cause is and how to fix it.
Oftentimes, meeting with the leaders or the people in charge of those components is a good first step in figuring out what the issues are.
Many times there is something missing in the processes, or the procedures, or there isn’t enough communication about the approach and processes. Sometimes, there is context missing that is not communicated from department to department.
Other times there is not enough foundation built out in your messaging and branding so you need to spend more time on marketing, or the sales needs more training around how to communicate in ways that align with marketing.
Figuring out the root cause of the confusion can help bring both teams or components together again, and unite under the same mission: making a difference for your customers and selling your product.
At the end of the day, both components are important to the success of your business. It’s important to do everything you can to make sure they are on the right page, and that your vision for your company is heard and actualized.
At Biz to Biz, we believe that building businesses is all about relationships, this starts with marketing and sales. And a big part of building those relationships expands with your network.
We have networking groups that are specifically designed to help you grow your business with a focus on professional development, refining sales skills, and passing referrals. With referrals, you can get more leads for your business as well as build credibility. We believe this is one of the best ways to grow a business and gain a supportive community at the same time.
You can learn more about our groups here, and you can register to attend as a guest here.
If you want to learn more about what makes Biz to Biz unique and why our groups are successful learn more about us here.
And hey, if you want to grow your business and build relationships within our COMMUNITY of small business owners and sales professionals focused on their businesses, community & personal GROWTH and on giving/receiving MENTORSHIP with other like-hearted people, then make sure to check out Biz to Biz networking groups!
Learn more or contact us directly by email at info@biztobiznow.com
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