The marketing and sales teams both play an integral role when it comes to generating and converting leads into sales for a business. Their roles are uniquely district, but at the same time essential, for driving business growth and revenue.
Marketers believe they provide sufficient content and collateral for the sales team to work with. In contrast, the sales team believe marketers are not providing enough materials for them to effectively engage buyers with.
This game of cat and mouse is why many businesses are losing out on increased sales and potential growth opportunities. Any business that wants to compete in today’s marketplace needs to understand the importance of aligning sales and marketing.
Why working in silos impedes ROI
No longer can sales and marketing teams work in silos. This is a barrier that needs to be taken down between the two. ‘Teamwork makes the dream work’, right? So why then do so many sales and marketing teams fail to make the dream a reality?
Producing up-to-date content is critical for the marketing team because of its ability to persuade prospects to move on to the next step of their buyer’s journey. In the absence of a collaborative approach or mechanism to assist, often the sales team are unable to access or locate the latest information when they need it, whilst marketing continues to create more content
Without a clear content management strategy in place, marketing will chaotically continue to churn out more content, inundating the sales team, which in turn will prevent them from finding and managing the relevant content required to effectively engage prospects.
Businesses have been struggling to align the two in terms of personnel, data, and software like Sharepoint, to maximise operational efficiency – a problem that remains all too common.
This disparity between the perceived importance of collaboration and how businesses approach collaboration in an organised manner needs to be addressed. Communication and collaboration are essential for success in today’s competitive climate. And if neither party is committed to shared success – it’s a recipe for failure.
Because they are two sides of the same coin, this symbiotic relationship necessitates clear and frequent communication, mutual support, and visibility. They must work in unison with one another to understand what’s working and what’s not. This is where a sales enablement platform can help.
What are the benefits of collaboration?
Effective collaboration helps sales and marketing to work cooperatively to convert quality leads. This consequently provides clearer visibility when forecasting potential income, increasing the sales teams’ chances of increased performance and producing better results. all round.
Marketers fully understand how critical it is to target prospects with the relevant messaging across the correct channels, to generate content that expedites sales. Marketers are now able to have a seat at the revenue table, be part of the conversations around ROI, have their say, and know what the ROI is on the content they’re producing.
This means that marketers are no longer in the dark when it comes to what’s working and what isn’t. They’re creating content with purpose and know where to target customers depending on where they are on the buyer journey.
What is the role of sales enablement in this?
In marketing circles, the term ‘sales enablement’ may be unfamiliar, given that it is titled in a way that implies it is a tool primarily for sales. Marketers do not see it as a tool that has numerous benefits for both sales and marketing teams.
Through AI-powered analytics, sales enablement platforms such as Highspot can provide data-driven insights for marketing and sales teams to optimise their assets and tactics which in turn help to generate more revenue.
According to Sirius Decisions, 60–70 per cent of B2B content created goes unused, but with a sales enablement platform, teams can collaborate and work in tandem when developing and analysing content and collateral. This creates a single source of truth that allows internal content to be found quickly.
During the sales pitch process sales enablement tools also provide marketing asset recommendations to sales teams that are likely to increase chances of success. These recommendations, based on the platform’s shared analytics, benefit both sales and marketing teams by connecting sellers to the most relevant content. This provides real-time visibility into customer engagement, measuring its extra capabilities by mapping against bottom-line results.
In Short…
Businesses that do not use sales enablement technologies do not have a single source of truth where all marketing content is stored. As a result, the sales team is often left hunting for the relevant content in multiple locations, which can result in the use of content that’s obsolete or even completely inaccurate.
There is a better and more efficient way for these teams to work together thanks to ever-advancing AI technology. Although sales enablement is still a largely unfamiliar term, those that are aware of it or have even tried the software will rarely look back once they do.
In a world increasingly driven by data insights, high-growth businesses with large sales and marketing functions simply can’t afford to overlook the ROI opportunity that sales enablement platforms provide.
