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Successfully aligning sales and marketing is a key step for those wishing to improve their sales performance. Good intentions may be there, but the reality on the ground is often different. In the face of the digital revolution, real synergies between these two departments are needed to improve sales performance within the company.
What lies behind the notion of sales & marketing alignment?
Within the internal organization of a company, there are often two main divisions: the sales division and the marketing division. This separation / distinction is due to the fact that each of these two departments has different roles. Although their missions are supposed to converge towards the same objective, i.e. the growth of a company, in practice the marketing and sales departments interact little on a daily basis.
A boundary that's becoming increasingly blurred! In 2021, 60% of companies believe that their marketing and sales reps departments are not aligned. It's no longer just the marketing department's job to generate leads, just as it's no longer just the sales department's job to grow sales. Alignment must replace distance.
How can we get these two departments to align and coordinate? By highlighting what they have in common. By aligning themselves, sales & marketing can work together and align their efforts to improve certain points: better qualify their leads, facilitate exchanges between the two poles, develop their products in coordination, create more powerful content, improve knowledge of prospects/customers...
Also known as Smarketing, this strategy is designed to generate more revenue for the company, break down silos, bridge communication gaps and leverage the strengths of an organization by bringing them together. But for a strategy like this to work, you have to remember that it has to be perfectly applied in the field every day.
Align Sales & Marketing to boost your sales effectiveness
Since the first stage of a purchase now begins online, it's time to combine forces and redouble our efforts to satisfy the customer. According to Forrester 2022, 68% of B2B buyers make their purchasing decision before even meeting a sales rep. To meet the new expectations of a hyper-connected, more autonomous, better informed and more demanding B2B buyer, sales reps needs marketing support more than ever.
Alignment involves a restructuring process: marketing and sales teams need to break free from "traditional" codes in order to work together more effectively. This collaboration leads to better distribution of information, better management of prospects, and more room to maneuver on sales opportunities.
Smarketing is part of a drive to digitalize the sales function. Faced with the digital revolution, marketing and sales teams must work together to improve sales efficiency. There are no longer two sectors, but a single team made up of sales reps and marketers. Prospects' and customers' expectations are better targeted, time saved in customer appointments is visible, and personalization is optimized. This collaboration benefits the company, since 84% of sales reps customers achieve their objectives if they adopt a Sales Enablement solution (Forbes).
What are the benefits of Sales & Marketing alignment?
1- Be able to create more relevant content
It's essential to have all the key information you need to understand your audience. To create content that meets the expectations of B2B buyers, you need to ask yourself what drives them to make a purchasing decision. This starts with defining the different stages of a sales process and then defining the type of content to push. All these media can be relevant at a given moment in a sales process. The richness of your media base is therefore key. But how can you do this when 90% of content is not used by B2B sales reps (Forrester)?
Sales Enablement helps to alleviate this problem by aligning your sales & marketing teams through an application. The benefits are multiple! Firstly, content is constantly updated, accessible offline and automatically synchronized on all your sales reps' devices. The sales force can also provide feedback on content, and pass on information directly to management during or after an appointment. As a result, we've seen an increase of over 30% in the use of content during appointments. Marketing teams can now analyze the use of all content presented before, during and after the appointment. A real goldmine enabling marketing teams to assess content performance, improve it accordingly and boost sales.
2- Save salespeople time
According to the Sales & Trends report (LinkedIn 2022), 67% of sales reps 's time is not devoted to sales. Most of this time is allocated to researching content, preparing sales presentations or reporting on visits. By freeing themselves from these time-consuming tasks, salespeople could devote more time to cultivating their relationship with their customers, gathering more information about them, or spending more time on tasks with high added value for their company.
By aligning marketing & sales reps, team operability is considerably improved. And that starts with saving time. Aligning sales & marketing means better dissemination of information through centralized data, more accurate reporting and optimization of the time spent preparing appointments.
During a traditional appointment preparation phase, the salesperson generally uses PowerPoint to create a sales presentation for the customer. He will then search the Drive for a number of supports, and continually adapt his presentation so that it is useful in different contexts.
With a Sales Enablement application, the sales rep no longer has to go looking for information, it comes directly to him. All content is accessible in real time, automatically synchronized and updated on all devices (tablet, smartphone and desktop). By coupling your CRM with a Sales Enablement application, you'll not only be able to track all the information presented during an appointment, but also free the sales rep from filling in the form, since the information will be automatically downloaded.
As for quantifying this gain, it can be very significant: EDF's management reportedly measured a gain of around 45 minutes per appointment and per sales rep! That's equivalent to saving a day a week. A considerable amount of precious time in an environment where more time means more deals. This time-saving also means money-saving! It is estimated that between 30% and 90% of the paper printing budget is saved each year (range observed by Salesapps on all its customers).
3- Improve the conversion of the company
Thanks to better team coordination and information transmission, efficiency within the structure is greater. Efficiency can be seen in the results sales reps. A minimum 6% increase in sales has been observed, rising to 20% after implementing a Sales Enablement solution.
The Sales Enablement tool also enables sales reps to better master their offers, and customers to better understand them. This translates into a higher conversion rate, as Vianney Leveugle, Sales and Marketing Director - GEODIS Distribution & Express, testifies.
Last but not least, the time saved by digitizing the process has led to an average 11% increase in the number of sales reps . With a sales force of 220 sales reps, Aurélie Meslage, Sales Development Director - Suntory Beverage & Food France, achieved 3,000 more visits in one year.
Digitize your sales force with a Sales Enablement application
Salesapps is more than a sales enablement tool, it's a tool for transforming and supporting sales forces towards excellence. According to CSO Insights, 61% of American companies have a Sales Enablement tool. Offer a sales experience that leaves a lasting impression on your customers, train and coach your sales reps, turn your marketing content into sales content and improve your sales performance with Salesapps.
