4 Common Mistakes Between Marketing and Sales
It’s no secret that the sales and marketing teams of a business are the first two points of contact that most companies have with their customers. With this being said, sales and marketing teams must work together to make sure that the customers journey starts off on the right path. That’s exactly why we’ve put together a list of 4 common mistakes that marketing and sales teams do for you to avoid!
1. No goals or objectives
“There are only two ways to influence human behavior: you can manipulate it or you can inspire it.” – Simon Sinek. Companies need to understand why their doing what they’re doing. A clear goal and objective are incredibly important. Having both your sales and marketing departments establish both short and long-term goals and objectives allows for your company to follow the same path, and when everyone is on the same path, magic happens.
Now, you need ways to measure these goals and objectives on a regular basis. Make sure you have regular follow up meetings to make sure the goals and objectives aren’t shifting off the set path.
2. No customization
Every customer is different. This means that every customer needs to have what we call in the industry as a “unique customer journey”. Say for example that you are selling SEO services. A potential customer who owns a painting business will have a different customer journey than someone who owns an accounting practice. Businesses are different, customers are different and thus the messaging and sales journey that they are going through should be unique. The more customized it is, the more likely they are to close.
Landing pages, calls to action, follow up emails are all examples of ways that you can customize different customer journeys. Now, in general, the more customization the more expensive. So a good tactic here is to create various customer “types” where you make a customized journey for each type.
3. Relying on Quick Fixes
It’s no secret that once sales goals are set, everyone in sales and marketing departments will do everything they can to reach them. At times however, doing everything in the now, might not be the best in the long run.
Let’s say for example that your sales are slowing down, and you want this issue to be resolved. So, you decide to put all your sales resources into a 1-week cold calling campaign to build a good pipeline. That won’t be enough. Now, don’t get me wrong, cold calling is a true art and if mastered can yield incredibly effective results, but it’s not sustainable in the long wrong on its own. It requires a process to work effectively. For example, if you work with your marketing department, and provide them with names of calls that spanned more than 90 seconds and send them a targeted email campaign, this will yield more effective results in the long run.
4. Lack of Analytics
We’ve said this before and we’ll say it again…In god we trust, everyone else bring data. Basing decisions off of instinct isn’t always the best bet. Especially when talking about marketing and sales. With powerful analytics tracking, you give your company a huge advantage, making goal setting and short-term objectives a lot easier to track and accomplish. As per a study done by Zs and EIU, 70 percent of respondents described sales and marketing analytics as “very” or “extremely” important to their organization’s competitive advantage, and 52 percent said their organizations invest heavily in analytics.
Understanding that these issues exist in your business is extraordinarily important. Implementing these tactics will help make sure that your sales and marketing departments become best friends. Results to follow.
