Tips to Get Your Marketing and Sales Teams Working in Harmony

The marketing department generates leads while the sales team works on converting those leads into actual revenue. Both departments have similar objectives for revenue operations, but their internal communication is often found lacking.  

The performance of your sales and marketing department is directly linked to the performance of your organization. If both departments are motivated and are doing their job on time, you’ll have a motivated group of workers on hand. If the sales department is not motivated, you’ll barely be able to break even.  

How can you get your sales and marketing teams motivated and working together? Let’s talk about some strategies: 

Create a Standard Hand-off Process   

Standardizing your hand-off process is a great place to start with getting your teams working together harmoniously. While your process and teams may not be in dire straits there is always room to grow and new ways to streamline.  

Files being handed to another

With a Revenue Operations (or RevOps) approach, automating processes is key so that all of your staff know the process, saving your business time and making sure that nothing falls through the cracks. Client delight is the goal after all, and what better way to promote delight than to have a solid process for your clients to get quick answers to their questions. 

When creating a standardized process consider these three tips: 

  1. Look at what your sales and marketing teams are already doing to find out where miscommunications happen, or information gets lost.
  2. Make sure your tech stack is working for both teams! One of the largest barriers between teams is a disconnect in communication and project planning platforms. By having your sales and marketing teams use the same platforms for project management and communication you can create a standard in your communication so that no one is waiting for a text when someone has already sent a Teams message.  
  3. Follow-up on your new process. Once you’ve created your hand-off process check back in after a couple of weeks and a couple of months to ask the teams how it’s working and if improvements can be made. You can also look at how it's affecting your customer; are your projects completed more thoroughly? Maybe deadlines are being met more often? 

Creating these processes in collaboration with the affected teams fosters a teamwork mindset and a streamlined system can boost productivity allowing you to deliver projects and products well and on time. 

Create Communication Standards for Sales and Marketing Teams  

Regular and effective communication is a must in getting your teams on the same page. Part of effective communication comes down to the tools you are using for internal chats. At Flawless Inbound we use Teamwork as a project planning platform as well as for internal communication with their chat function. This way our project managers know exactly how to get ahold of sales leaders to answer their questions and project information can all be kept in one group chat.  

Communication

A good CRM such as HubSpot, can make all of the difference for your internal communication as well. HubSpot’s CRM sets your teams up for success with sales, service, and marketing hubs that work together for an integrated and holistic customer approach. Avoid importing spreadsheets for customer data or using different systems to manage different tasks and data sets, this way you’ll waste less time looking for information because HubSpot knows exactly where it is. 

Never underestimate the power of an excellent communication platform for team success! 

Acknowledge Unique Scope 

Streamlining your processes and creating efficiencies is important but we’ve saved the best for last: Taking a people first approach.  

A team gathers with arms around each other

The downside to efficiency building is that people can get lost in the shuffle. How can this be prevented? Acknowledge the unique scope that each of your sales and marketing team members have. You’ve hired them for their unique skills and personality so don’t let them forget how much they offer to the team! 

Consider offering unique training opportunities for teams to show each other what they do. This cultivates appreciation for the other team and allows them to show their expertise. It’s a people-first approach that lets your team know they’re valued, and clients will notice too. 

Want to learn more about Revenue Operations and how you can unite your teams?