With information and technology at our fingertips, the buying journey has changed immensely. Buyers now do their research long before ever speaking to a sales representative, which means marketing plays a bigger role than ever before. Learn more about the importance of “smarketing” for your business and why you should be aligning your sales and marketing teams.
What Is ‘Smarketing’?
Smarketing unifies your sales force and marketing teams. It focuses on aligning goals and missions surrounding common revenue goals. When bringing these two groups of professionals together, you’ll achieve:
- Better customer acquisition rates
- Improved revenue retention
- Increased growth
Why Does Your Company Need to Invest in ‘Smarketing’?
Misalignment of your marketing and sales teams can do more harm than you might realize. Traditionally, these groups of people have been divided into two silos. While their jobs are very different, their goals are ultimately the same — to attract new customers and bring attention to their brand.
If left to their silos, marketing and sales departments are at odds with each other. Though when you bring them together, studies have shown that you can realize a 34% increase in revenue and a 36% rise in customer retention.
Why? Because this unification of teams enables your company to understand your customers better, thereby informing the creation of content, ads and consumer outreach in ways that boost awareness. Each role complements the other one.
Marketing professionals collect customer insight data and develop content that facilitates the inbound lead generation process. From there, the sales team runs with these leads to complete outreach and directly engage with potential customers. As you can see, it only makes sense for these groups to be on the same page.
The Focus on Customer Centricity
When you have a customer-centric business model, you’re often already on the road to a winning strategy. You shouldn’t be focusing on what your sales and marketing teams can do for your business. Rather, you should be trying to figure out how they can cater to your potential customers’ needs. To strengthen your bottom line, bring your sales and marketing teams together to identify ways to fulfill your audience’s requests and offer solutions to their pain points.
Aligning sales and marketing with one set of goals can lead to:
- 209% more revenue from marketing
- 67% greater efficiency when it comes to closing deals
- Better use of marketing materials
Did you know that 60% to 70% of all marketing materials that are created go unused? That’s because, if you’re not employing smarketing tactics, the people who are creating content in your marketing department aren’t understanding what your salespeople need.
Partnering With a Company That Can Help You Employ Smarketing in Your Workplace
When you’re exploring vendors that offer the ability to enhance your smarketing efforts and bring your sales and marketing groups together, look for a company that takes a holistic approach to the customer journey experience. You want a business that designs, deploys and manages the sales process in ways that make sense for your brand and the customers you’re trying to attract.
Remember, every touchpoint between your business and your audience is important. From lead qualification to customer renewals, there’s always an opportunity to create an exceptional experience that’s built around trust, loyalty and results.
It’s all about great training, world-class tools and processes, and the willingness to change the way you’ve always done things for the betterment of your business. Our team at ServiceSource are the leaders in outsourced solutions for corporations, to connect with an expert contact us today.
