Marketing and Sales Integration: Are Your Marketing and Sales Teams United or Divided?

How do you achieve marketing and sales integration?

Here are a few steps to get you started:

Speak the same Language

‍Make sure that everyone has a mutual understanding of what terms mean. If there are discrepancies, this can make it difficult to arrive at the same desired end goal. You might be confusing people or misleading them without even knowing it. Using jargon that is specific to Sales or specific to Marketing can confuse people and leads to a further division of culture.

‍What is a Qualified Lead?

‍The handoff between Marketing and Sales is crucial, and when Marketing and Sales establishes parameters for what makes a “good” lead, then Sales will be more satisfied with incoming leads and can do their job more effectively. The effectiveness of the Marketing team’s lead generation will be improved because they will not be wasting time nurturing leads that never get closed because they weren’t ready to be handed off to Sales.

Together, Marketing and Sales should outline what their ideal customer profile is. This will give marketing a standard of measurement when determining whether or not to hand a lead over to sales. Figure out key factors such as whether the contact is a decision-maker for the organization, whether they have a clear project, what kind of budget they have, and the time frame of their project. Establishing this kind of framework helps eliminate emotive complaints and instead facilitates more productive feedback regarding exactly what each team needs from each other.