Unlock The Hidden Potential Between Sales and Marketing

The concept of closed loop communication between sales and marketing has been discussed ad-nauseam for a long time but from my observation across many businesses is that it is a hard concept to truly implement. In another blog I have written, I have touched on the difficulty I personally experienced firsthand when I started to wade into the online marketing world when I had a role in operations. My role was in an SME type business whose team structure didn’t include a marketing role so we utilised a third party marketing partner to work with us on our marketing strategy and activities. The mismatch was real…………

I discovered the reporting I was offered from marketing made perfectly good sense to a marketer but I struggled with deciphering it into a format that was simple that armed me with the facts that I could use to leverage results within the business.

The reports generally contained complex metrics that were displayed in colourful abstract graphical formats that needed to be unravelled. Essentially, my marketing partner needed to talk to me in a language that was more sales orientated and I found that both of us had to contribute to the translation process to fully realise the best outcomes.

Ironically, we discovered that I needed to alter the way I communicated our sales or operational feedback to marketing.

Once we were both speaking the same language, the outcome of our newfound comprehension of each other was sales growth. Marketing was delivering to sales exactly the results that sales needed. Conversely, sales was giving marketing the feedback that marketing needed to hone their marketing activities for better results.

This ‘closed loop reporting’ had a definitive, positive impact on our return on investment (ROI) in regard to marketing activities. Teams need to set up a sales and marketing structure to maximise business results.

• Use common language between sales and marketing
• Establish defined service level agreements in both sales and marketing
• Meet regularly to discuss results and replan

The irony of it all was that I had read and been aware of smarketing and it’s closed loop reporting structure for many years but had never truly implemented it with measurable success. The relationship between sales and marketing teams has ever been more relevant to ensure sustained business growth.

For me this was the day that business had changed forever……………….