The sales department and Marketing department differ from each other, but when they are aligned and combined alongside each other, it will produce a powerful impact on revenue growth. The benefits that it will bring when these two are combined together will allow businesses to actually know what they want by improving focus, which will result in having clearer business goals. Without having clear goals, it can be a struggle to increase revenue growth due to not knowing whether the business is going in the right direction.
What are revenue and revenue growth?
Revenue is the profit gained from the total sale of products and services provided by a business. The revenue is compared with the overall business expenses to analyze business performance. A healthy business’s performance is measured by how effective the alignment of sales and marketing is. Meanwhile, revenue growth is the increase in total sales over a certain period of time, which is usually measured annually or quarterly. As a key performance indicator, businesses can strategize and determine their ability to grow or expand, whether to improve pricing strategies or increase sales of their products and services.
What is Smarketing?
The term is derived from a combination of Sales and Marketing, a business strategy to integrate them into business processes. The term became popular in 2008 and is used in a Harvard Review Case Study on HubSpot by Professor Thomas Steenburgh. Smarketing is created due to the frequent direct communication between these two departments. With Smarketing, businesses can broaden their impact on customers, gain hidden customer insights, provide the right marketing content, demonstrate ROI and ensure growth.
Here is how to harmonize sales and marketing departments for revenue growth:
Unite Under One Goal
It is better to avoid putting “blocks” between sales and marketing operations so that both departments can work toward the same goals. Transparency from both departments can make it easier to define the goals and metrics needed for the business. It is understandable that it can be a challenge to align these departments since the KPIs are measured differently. To work on the same goals that are centered around revenue growth, defining common goals such as increasing sales and improving customer retention is one way. Both departments must ensure regular communication to observe different perspectives and understand how objectives can be merged to form collaboration and align goals.
Improve Customer Experience
A holistic view of customers is one of the challenges faced by businesses in order to create a single customer experience, which can improve the entire customer journey. To improve their experience, both departments must work together to gain customer insights from the customer feedback and satisfaction that can be gained from product reviews or surveys. Through the insights, both can brainstorm and exchange ideas to align goals toward a better customer journey. In modern technology, companies usually use CRM technology, which is really effective for gaining high sales and aligning marketing. Improving the customer experience will help businesses gain loyalty from customers, which will contribute to sales and growth and enhance the business’s reputation.
Ensure Consistent Marketing Messages
Misaligned messages can cause confusion for current and potential customers. Poor messages can lead to lost sales and a decline in revenue and they also give a bad impression of businesses. From the outside, people can see a lack of teamwork and a weak brand focus. Since marketing and sales represent the face of a company, it is important to communicate and discuss with the team to deliver accurate and consistent messaging. With consistent and clear marketing messaging, potential prospects are already familiar with and understand what the businesses want to offer. The alignment will ease the customer journey, which has a high potential to close the deal.
Lead Nurturing
Leads who are not ready to buy must be nurtured to convert into sales, which will increase revenue. To align the sales and marketing teams, planning lead nurturing activities requires a strategy. By providing valuable contents through marketing and communications messaging, such as resources, solving their problems and helping them with the buying process, this can build relationships with potential customers over time. As long as it is nurtured enough, it can move leads through the sales funnel and increase the possibility of conversion over time.
Data-Driven Decision Making (DDDM)
Data and analytics that are obtained from sources such as CRM systems, marketing automation platforms, social media analytics and customer surveys are used to help businesses identify what strategies could work. Netflix has shown an example of data-driven decision-making. They use data to drive logical decisions and analyze it to create viral content and web series. Observing customer behavior and interactions on the platform helps them make many hits. Hence, analyzing the data will help to improve the sales and marketing strategies, which will lead to higher revenue if done effectively.
The alignment and collaboration between the sales and marketing departments can have a huge impact on revenue growth for businesses. When these two critical functions work together harmoniously, it enables businesses to enhance their relationship with customers, uncover hidden insights, deliver targeted marketing content, demonstrate ROI, and ultimately ensure growth.
