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The application of the Inbound Marketing methodology not only requires the effort and intervention of a company's marketing department, but also its bc data vietnam package sales department. But do you know how they should work together to achieve Inbound Sales? Smarketing is the answer.
Both forces are involved in the conversion flywheel, and in fact, collaboration and mutual feedback are essential for our wheel to turn and the inbound machinery to function properly: while marketing generates the prospects, sales closes the deal and converts them into customers.
This union is known as Smarketing (Sales + Marketing) and is defined as “the process of aligning a company's marketing and sales teams towards a common objective and focused on improving revenue . ”
But how do both teams work or how should they work under the Inbound Sales methodology?
You may be used to seeing sales and marketing teams acting as two completely separate forces. But if you think about it, they both have the same goals: getting customers and generating revenue. So it’s time to remove any friction between the two teams. According to Hubspot, there are five steps for both marketing and sales to do Smarketing:
1. Speak the same language
If you've been following the inbound methodology for a while, you'll have noticed that until recently, the funnel or conversion funnel was used to track the purchase process of prospects. However, this has changed and now there is the flywheel , a wheel that always revolves around the customer and does not end once the purchase is made. On the contrary, it continues to delight customers so that they become brand promoters.
But how do you use it to unify your sales and marketing teams? Simple, the flywheel has 3 fundamental elements: attract, engage and delight. While at its center is always the customer . To make the wheel turn, constant and assertive communication is needed between both teams, to achieve objectives and take care of the customer experience.
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Marketing should focus on collecting all the necessary information about the prospect while educating, nurturing, and preparing them to make a decision. Once the prospect is qualified to be approached by the sales team, they are transferred to sales. But for the process to be successful, you must provide them with contextual information about their needs, interests, pain points, and goals.
Why? If the sales team has quality information about the prospect, they can establish a bond of trust more quickly and develop a much more personalized sales pitch. In any case, both teams must have the primary objective of satisfying the customer in order to make their flywheel turn.
As long as sales and marketing are aligned on their goal, know the needs of their prospects, and understand each of the elements of the flywheel, it will be much easier to reduce friction so that it can spin much faster and generate more and more happy customers.
In fact, those companies that choose the flywheel over the traditional funnel have a great advantage since their teams are not the only ones helping them grow: their clients also collaborate in this process.
So, educate your teams, teach them what each stage of the flywheel consists of and how they can help each other achieve better results.
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2. Implement a service level agreement
A service level agreement defines the commitment of marketing and sales teams to deliver results and support each other in achieving targeted revenue.
For example, the marketing team is concerned about how many leads of a certain quality the sales team needs to reach its quota. Meanwhile, the sales team tries to do everything possible to not waste those leads that have already been acquired.
This is a great way to encourage feedback between both teams : if sales feels that leads are not properly educated, or do not have the necessary information, they can communicate this to marketing and vice versa. The goal of this agreement is for each team to be clear about what they need to do in order to complete their job and for both teams to follow through.
3. Configure closed-loop reporting
As I said above, communication between marketing and sales teams is basic and fundamental within the Inbound Marketing methodology, and what better way to make it work than by using a tool.
Thus, closed-loop reporting is the feedback process between both areas. Without it, an email from the marketing team may never be answered by the sales team, or the sales team may not know the destination of a lead, etc.
Specifically, closed-loop reporting allows you to analyze which marketing sources brought you more customers (organic, social, referral), know what content is needed to close the sales process, automatically notify the sales team when a person revisits a site and offer them better content, etc.
Just as a service level agreement allows both sales and marketing to put their commitments in writing and communicate their requirements for fulfilling their responsibilities, this type of report allows you to identify those things that are working and how they should be applied.
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4. Trust the data
To do this, it is necessary to use panels or dashboards created jointly by both teams in order to align reports around the objectives. With this, monitoring will be permanent and useful for solving problems in time.
Setting goals for traffic, lead generation, campaigns or contact volume and measuring progress is key. Remember to make the data visible to both teams. Both sales and marketing must know how each is doing: it is not about competing or making one better than the other. Both must aim to achieve the proposed objectives together.
5. Maintain open communication
Have you noticed how much emphasis is placed on the communication aspect? As in every company, dialogue and feedback are vital for everyone to form a single force and work as one.
In this sense, in order for marketing and sales teams to be on the same page, they must hold weekly, periodic and specific meetings. Meanwhile, management must have them on a monthly basis.
