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Unifying Sales and Marketing

 

Aren’t sales and marketing the same thing? Not really! However, sales and marketing are very important pillars of every business. Although they are not the same thing, they are closely related and act as the stimulus for generating revenue for an organization. Or at least that’s how things are supposed to work.

When you look online for the definition of marketing, there are many descriptions to choose from. One that really caught my eye was from Creative Director Regina Anaejionu:

“Marketing is educating your potential customers, raising their desire for transformation, and increasing their ability to make an informed decision by differentiating your solutions from all their other options. When marketing is done well, sales become easy because the customer not only believes their situation can change, but that your product or service will be a key part of that change.”

In simpler terms, marketing builds awareness and attracts potential customers to your business. If you agree with that definition of marketing, then sales can be defined as those activities that convert leads into paying customers, such as prospecting, preparing, approaching, presenting, handling objections, closing, and following up.

So, why is it important for sales and marketing to be unified? Well, the marketing team claims that they gave the sales team a sufficient number of leads and can’t understand why they can’t close those deals. And sales declares that all of those leads were worthless. That’s no way to live!

At NextLevel Thinking, we believe that developing common goals, outlining specific and well-defined potential customers, and encouraging ongoing communication between the two teams (sales and marketing) is the key to closing this divide. The magic happens when the positioning and messaging of an organization’s product or service attracts enough, or more than enough, potential customers on an ongoing basis to keep the pipeline full. At that point, sales has the opportunity to expand on this message in such a way that it meets the specific needs of the well-qualified potential customer.

It sounds like unifying sales and marketing might be a good idea!