Breaking the Sturdy Walls Between Sales and Marketing

Although sales and marketing operate as different functions, their goal is the same: attracting new business. When both operate seamlessly together, they can boost the business with their particular expertise. Yet too often the reality within companies looks different: silos, unshared information and untapped potential.

As a salesperson, I encounter sales and marketing interaction every day. My clients and colleagues often work around marketing, and while roles vary between organizations, the problem is universal: sales and marketing are not integrated closely enough.

The goal of both sales and marketing is to sustain business, even if they go about it in different ways.

Building awareness of the brand and reaping profit from those efforts is no easy task, let alone when department’s aren’t speaking to each other enough. Sales and marketing misalignment is already costing businesses a lot, an estimated 1 trillion in dollars per year. Not tapping into key information from both departments translates into losing business – and major opportunities for engaging clients.

Same job, different tools

With the purpose of generating business as the primary driver for both functions, sales and marketing share the same goal. Both do this by communication, but with key differences. 

Whereas marketers often communicate to the masses, the salesperson appeals to the individual. A content marketer produces and plans stellar content and campaigns, proof of brand to persuade prospects. Salespeople draw on building relationships and finding the keys to a problem. If either end is not successfully part of the process, the stack may collapse. 

Despite the different approaches, the endgame is the same: the most common measurement of success for content marketing programmes is Total Sales (Hubspot, 2020).

Both need each other

While it makes sense to boost sales and marketing separately, the fact remains that they need each other. Both sales and marketing professionals have their niche tasks – an excellent marketer may not be the best salesperson, and vice versa.

A marketer can give you more than a generic buyer persona – they can tell you exactly what is driving an existing or prospective client. By surveying client purposes with Jobs to Be Done studies, for example, marketers can guide salespeople into offering solutions instead of products. Salespeople, on the other hand, can tell you how they closed the deal, or what the client’s wishes are at the moment of purchase.

By sharing their valuable know-how, the marketer and sales rep can contribute to the business while improving and mastering their own game.

Meeting (somewhere) halfway is key

Working from these two different starting points means that there needs to be a common ground somewhere in between. In practice, this common ground can look different with each case, and it can be far from the middle, when it comes to the sales journey.

Collaboration means more than meetings. It means recognising where the other must step in during the funnel and how. Working towards your respective strengths, but also getting out of your comfort zone. Reversing roles: putting on the sales hat and doing marketing for the individual, or remembering that the brand image can be more subtle than the sales pitch. Sharing information, especially the silent kind and even just sharing your daily problems.

Let’s face it: there is no one way to win a client. But if there was a magic recipe for boosting business, it might be this: have sales and marketing teach each other and use the tools at their disposal. Both can work their magic in mysterious, important ways while providing significant, perhaps even surprising value to each other.

Thinking of boosting your advertising? Read more about how to make advertising work for you as well in Finland as in other Nordic countries.

Author

Olavi Kajantie
+358 50 590 7828
olavi.kajantie@sanoma.com

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