If you’re familiar with either of these departments then no doubt you’ll have heard each of these departments blaming each other for new business sales revenue being down! Typically, sales are blaming marketing because they don’t have enough collateral or new case studies to hand to get prospects over the line, or marketing is blaming sales for not closing down business fast enough? Does this all sound familiar; are similar things situations happening in your organisation? If so, what are the solutions to this subtle conflict which is potentially slowing down your business growth?
Scenario 1: Marketing haven’t managed to get new/updated material over to sales in a suitable timeframe for sales to then win new business. This may be for several reasons; unfeasible timescales, external suppliers and even just simply poor communication between the two departments.
Solution: Make sure that marketing is more involved in the sales process and even give them a small new business target of their own. As most things boil down to communication, ensure this is key and if the deadlines being set aren’t possible for Marketing to meet, then sales need to understand this and communicate it further down the line to prospects AND management!
Scenario 2: Marketing do not have enough information to put together the collateral they are being asked to produce. Again, this may be down to internal communication, external clients or the dreaded deadline date! As such, the marketing material the sales department needs is either not up to spec or simply isn’t ready to be used.
Solution: Ask sales to write the case studies to then be checked and proofed by marketing. After all, the sales team are the ones who know how to make prospects tick and cross the dotted line! Also, ask more of your existing customers for some good stories to use!
Both of these scenarios are common and the solutions are actually quite sensible ideas but in the real world, with targets to hit and reports to write, neither is likely to happen. Instead, the same rows keep happening and nothing changes.
So, are there any other solutions that could solidify these two essential functions into a cohesive team that utilises each other’s strengths? At VST we think there is and you’re probably already aware of it. By outsourcing part of your sales and marketing function to a sales support agency, you will actually realise many of the following benefits without the pressure of day to day work or the time-consuming nature of internal politics to contend with.
- The extremely important avenue of communication between teams will be opened wider than ever before, ensuring that all parties are on the same wavelength and situations that occur due to poor communications become a thing of the past
- You will yield a truly flexible extension to both teams that genuinely has your company’s best interests at heart
- You will have an instant additional resource (without the head count) that acts as a conduit between your sales and marketing departments
- Your targeted message will be delivered more consistently than ever before and you know the work will be done
- You will be provided with high-quality meetings and opportunities each week once the project has been set up
About Us
If any of the above strikes a chord with you and you’d like a chat to discuss instantly growing your Sales and Marketing team, please call our new business line on 0800 085 5574, or email our sales team on newbusiness@myvst.co.uk
