Sales & Marketing: Making the Link for Your Company

Sales & Marketing: Making the Link for Your Company

Sales and marketing. Together they are the lifeblood of any organization —creating opportunities for new business, opening new markets, and gathering competitive intelligence.

Marketing offers firms the ability to communicate with many people at the same time, to pump new information into the marketplace, and to gather information and discern trends. Sales is the critical function of bringing new prospects and clients into the fold, of making a personal link. Two pieces of the same puzzle, right?

So why do so many sales and marketing teams operate as independent —rather than interdependent — entities? And if this is the case in your company, how do you fix it?

First, it is critical to take a look at why this has happened. Is it because the groups don’t communicate well? Or because they believe — philosophically—that the two disciplines are not intrinsically linked? Or perhaps your sales and marketing folks want to operate together, but cannot easily overcome some organizational obstacles? Once you’ve identified how things got to where they are now, you’ll know what resources to deploy to fix the problem.

To create better working relationships between the two teams, consider joint planning and brainstorming sessions. Management coaching and skill development may be in order, too.

The benefit to you? Having a good offense is great, but you’ll still lose if you play poor defense. By getting everyone on the same page you’ll be able to take complete advantage of your sales and marketing infrastructure and to develop all of your business opportunities to the fullest.