Here at Ask Marketing, we believe that the competitive pressures we face each day, as well as the ever-changing business landscape, require a much more synergistic approach to achieving success – one where your Sales and Marketing teams literally work together as a single and cohesive unit.

Yep, you read that right.

It’s time to rethink the way that your Sales and Marketing teams work within your B2B, service-based or SaaS business.

While these two functions have typically always worked as separate entities, the reality is that allowing for close and frequent collaboration between your Sales and Marketing divisions can, in fact, increase the revenue and success of your organisation.

In this article, we’re going to show you exactly why you need to merge your Sales and Marketing functions before outlining the direct benefits of doing so and giving you everything you need to make it happen.

So, let’s get started.

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Why should Sales and Marketing be a united function?

When a transaction happens online, such as in eCommerce, Marketing is pretty much responsible for the entire sales journey. For example, when you visit the Nike store online to buy a new pair of shoes, every touchpoint along the way is directly impacted by marketing. While it’s technically a sale, it’s a marketing execution.

When it comes to professional services and SaaS providers like you, however, your transactions largely happen offline – for several reasons:

• The average value of your transactions is higher
• The time to conversion is much longer
• The lifetime value of each client is much higher – with several additional relationships and touchpoints along the way

Now, when transactions take place offline, they rely on a key partnership between your Sales and Marketing teams. Your Marketing team is responsible for initiating the sales journey with the client before your Sales team takes over to convert the prospect and get them over the line.

That’s why it’s so important for your Sales and Marketing teams to be in sync with one another.

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Let’s consider the benefits of a cohesive Sales and Marketing function

Combining your Sales and Marketing teams can lead to many great benefits for your service-based organisation, including, but not limited to:
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1. Better collaboration

With your Sales team no longer asking what the Marketing team is doing, and vice versa, you’ll eliminate confusion – leading to better overall results.
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2. A pipeline full of prospects that are already sold on your offering

When Sales and Marketing work on the sales journey together, you end up with a pipeline full of highly qualified leads that are already fully aware of what you offer and how it will benefit them. From there, all they need to do is put pen to paper.
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3. Greater efficiencies

When Sales and Marketing support each other, rather than play guessing games about how the other is going to communicate with prospects, you’ll see more efficiency in your sales process.

For example, your Sales team can leverage all available marketing collateral throughout the sales journey, and your Marketing team can gain direct in-field sales knowledge to help improve touchpoint efficiency as well.
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4. Sales also becomes education led

Marketing is about education, but when Sales takes over, that education typically gives way to the final conversion push.

Combining your Sales and Marketing sees education continue throughout, meaning your entire pipeline journey becomes much more conducive, transitional and valuable for your clients – ultimately leading to more sales.

At Ask Marketing, we refer to this as “give, give, give and give more before we earn the right to take.” In other words, it means proactively providing value at every step from stranger to conversion to encourage prospects to finally become a paying client, as opposed to pushing.

By now, you should have a better understanding of why it’s so important to merge your Sales and Marketing functions. Now, I’m going to show you how to make it happen in your organisation.

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How do you get your Sales and Marketing teams to actually work together?

Every business is different, and every business model is different.

However, there are certain actions relevant to every service-based business that you can take to build a cohesive Sales and Marketing function:
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1. Align your Sales and Marketing’s overarching communication style and core mission

Instead of simply telling the Sales team that they need to increase their conversions by a certain percentage, ask both teams to work together to show your prospects why they cannot live without your offering. In other words, create a holistic and united mission that everyone can easily understand.
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2. Get together as a single commercial team

Rather than coming together as separate teams on regular occasions, come together as one united team and share information that will benefit all members.

For example, here at Ask Marketing, when we conduct research, such as competitor analysis or customer persona interviews, we don’t just share the results with certain people, we share them with our entire business team, because all functions stand to benefit and improve from hearing those results.
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3. Consider the exact pieces of marketing content that can be leveraged in the sales process.

Gain a better understanding of the marketing content and touchpoints that you need so you can better align your Sales and Marketing teams throughout the customer journey.

For more on this, check out: 10 Customer Touchpoints to Convert Prospects into Clients in Your Service Business.
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4. Align your teams with three key metrics

There are three metrics that will better help you to understand when your Sales and Marketing teams are effectively working together to achieve better results, and we’re going to discuss exactly what they are in our next post, 3 Metrics to Prove Your Sales and Marketing Are Working Synergistically.
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So, keep an eye out for our next blog…

And if you’d like to learn more about how you can merge your Sales and Marketing team, check out our latest LinkedIn Live event, where we discuss exactly how to build your B2B pipeline in 2023.

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Do you need help merging your Sales and Marketing teams in 2023?

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All you have to do is Ask!

At Ask Digital Marketing, we combine decisive digital strategy and managed marketing execution to help B2B service-based businesses build demand, establish thought leadership and own their industry through digital business marketing.

Stop waiting. Start building. Experience success.

Just get in touch with us and we can discuss your business to help you navigate the digital marketing landscape towards success.

Let’s harness the power of digital marketing today!

For more great marketing content, connect with our company leaders, Alexandra King and Stephanie King, or follow our Ask Marketing LinkedIn page.