Sales is not Marketing. Marketing is not Sales.
Marketing and sales have a lot of similarities. They're best friends, but they are not the same person. There is a common misconception that the sales team should do marketing tasks and the marketing team should do sales. The truth is, that while sales and marketing go hand-in-hand, the two play very different roles.
Even here at Elevate, we have a team member dedicated to our marketing, and another who leads up our sales. By delegating tasks and responsibilities, we can accomplish more.
Marketing is the invitation to the party.
Consider marketing as the invitation to the party. Marketing is the social butterfly telling everyone how great you are and for that reason, we love marketing! They know the right things to say, making even the gloomiest of days, seem bright and promising.
Marketing's goal is to build brand awareness, create and manage the company's core message, create multi-faceted campaigns, manage the company's social channels and website content, and create materials for the sales team. Much of marketing is centered around determining what the company is and promoting it through the right media and channels.
A couple things marketing is not...Marketing is not an assistant to the sales team. Marketing team members should not be responsible for making cold calls or closing deals with new clients.
Sales is the friend that...
Sales is the friend that sits and talks with guests at the party. They are willing to spend hours investing into relationships. They learn everything there is to know about you, so they can serve you better, solve your problems, and provide you with sound advice.
While marketing brings people to the party, it's important for sales to turn acquaintances into lifelong friends. In other words, sales are responsible for converting leads into sales. This is where many people think it stops. But as a sales team member, it is vitally important for you to continue nurturing the client relationship.
Investing in people takes time, which why sales should not be responsible for event coordination, managing the company’s social channels, and marketing material design.
How Sales and Marketing Work Together
Just as a glove needs a hand, marketing and sales need one another. These two teams should be in constant communication and supporting one another day in and day out. What does a dream sales and marketing team look like to us? For starters, the dream team is comprised of incredibly passionate individuals – people who absolutely love their jobs and serving others. Once you have your dream team, identifying roles and responsibilities is important.
Since the world of sales and marketing overlap, it’s important for your team members to know who is responsible for what, so that everyone can focus on what they do best. This leads us to processes. Processes can be a boring business buzzword, but processes help define where one task ends, and another begins. It tells us how and when we need to pass the baton. It tells us when sales needs to tag in marketing to take on the next steps of communications.
Processes play a crucial role in developing communications and drip campaigns with clients and new leads. If you want to run successful marketing campaigns, your sales team needs to play a role! For instance, marketing can create a killer campaign, but we need contacts to deliver it to. Marketing needs to know the basic five W’s:
- Who does the campaign speak to?
- What are the goals of the campaign and what is the call to action?
- Where are we developing the campaign - using which tools and channels?
- When does the campaign need to run and for how long?
- Why do we need to run the campaign?
While you might think that it is solely marketing’s job to define these, it’s not. Marketing and sales should work together on defining the objectives. This is how marketing can support sales, and sales can support marketing. When the stars align, and the teams work together, a truly beautiful friendship is created!