If you manage a sales and marketing team, you’ve felt the pain; those awkward sales and marketing meetings that belong more on the school playground than they do in the boardroom.
The guide and videos below will help you surface key points of resistance, and get your salespeople and marketers on the same page.
From four different perspectives
Want to maximise your marketing and sales team’s potential? Make sure you can put a tick against each of these key areas.
Get a basic understanding of each other
As cliché as it is, marketing and sales are two sides of the same coin. And, as with many things, having open communication between the two departments is paramount to driving the business forward. A basic understanding will enable you to identify the different pain points each other faces along the customer journey from customer awareness through to conversion - as well as how you can both add value.
Walk in each other's shoes…
or at least attend each other's meetings.
Reading and resources can’t be beaten when it comes to getting an understanding of the greater picture, but (and it’s important) they can only take you so far. The reality is far more nuanced. Just as you can’t expect to pass your driving test without both theory and practical lessons, the same can be said in business. Formal, informal when it comes to education it all matters and sometimes you can’t beat learning on the job.
One way to overcome this is to provide marketers with protected time to shadow a salesperson in sales meetings and client visits. This new knowledge can then be employed to develop strategies with a sales focus and deliver more value to not only both departments but, ultimately, the customer.
Build a shared understanding of the customer
One of the most important things you can do as a business is for all your departments to have a clear understanding of who your customer is. The BlueOcean strategy canvas provides a concise way to say what you’re good at, why you should win, where you should play and what you should communicate. With a clear and consistent visualisation of who the customer is, it’s easier for each department to know which levers to pull and which are definitely best left well alone.
Now watch this...
It’s time for a deeper dive into the good stuff. We’ve spoken to some of the BlueOcean team from four different departments to find out their perspective, which you can watch below.
By now you’ve probably come to realise we’re big on learning from other departments outside our own. So if you work in marketing and only have a couple of minutes spare, check out the sales perspective and vice versa. Better yet, grab a coffee and watch them all.
