The success of any e-commerce brand depends on the strength and capabilities of its two functions – sales and marketing. By reinforcing the solutions a brand has to offer and by building meaningful relationships with potential and existing customers, the salesforce of a company converts leads into profitable customers and one-time buyers into loyal brand advocates.
Similarly, the marketing team is responsible for attracting people to the brand and creating a desire to purchase its products. They conduct market research to understand the needs, interests, and pain points of the target market and use the information to design and deliver high-quality content and unique campaigns that can spark an interest in the company’s offerings.
In most e-commerce companies, sales and marketing are separate and distinct functions. However, when they join forces, they can create many positive outcomes for the brand.
How? Take a look!
Increased Probability of Conversion
Many pieces of research have shown why targeted and personalized sales tactics are vital to a company’s growth. One study found that 23% of salespeople want “better quality leads” to sell the company’s products in a targeted and personalized way. By focusing on a smaller group of people, they can target their sales efforts and increase the chances of conversion. The same study also found that 15% of marketing pros want “more leads” to promote the company’s products and get more people interested in them. Unfortunately, most e-commerce companies are able to get more leads but fail to capture better quality leads.
As a result, regardless of what type of sales tactic or marketing communication they employ, they find that the probability of converting a prospect into a customer is low. But when they work together and communicate with each other, they get to share relevant information about every prospect and lead and discuss sales tactics and marketing ideas that are working or failing. Thus, instead of wasting time on bad leads, they start focusing on targeting the most qualified leads and thereby, increasing the probability of conversions.
Increase Sales and Revenues
According to HubSpot, sales-marketing alignment can increase company revenues by as much as 208% compared to companies with disjoined teams.
And the good news doesn’t stop there. Companies with well-integrated and well-aligned sales and marketing functions also close 38% more deals, achieve 24% faster three-year revenue growth, and see 27% faster three-year profit growth.
The opposite happens when these teams are misaligned. Sales-marketing misalignment decreases sales productivity and wastes marketing efforts. Moreover, sales fail to contact a majority of leads (73%) that are passed on to them. The team also fails to nurture many leads so an alarming 79% of them never convert. All of this has a tangible financial impact.
In fact, misalignments are so costly that they cost companies a staggering $1 trillion a year.
Fortunately, it’s not impossible to get sales and marketing on the same page. The key is to maintain open communication channels between them and encourage honest feedback about shared goals, strategies, and any required adjustments. It’s also helpful to focus on KPIs that are relevant to both teams. Finally, creating a service level agreement (SLA) that clearly stipulates the deliverables each party agrees to provide to the other is a good way to integrate the teams while minimizing disruptions and the potential for playing blame games.
Improve Customer Relationships
Traditionally, the sales teams were responsible for managing and maintaining customer relationships. But now, buyer loyalty comes at a premium, and buyer journeys incorporate more touchpoints and brand communication channels. In this landscape, it’s not enough for a sales team to manage and nurture customer relationships. This is where customer relationship management steps in and delegates tasks to everybody.
An organization as a whole can rely on CRM tools that allow sales and marketing – and other – teams to view customer data and manage relationships with them, regardless of the customer lifecycle stage they are in. In addition, the organization can also use AI tools and live chat to make each interaction meaningful rather than transactional, thus setting the stage for deeper and more profitable relationships.
By working as one non-siloed unit, sales and marketing can see the same customer data. They get 360-degree customer views which allows them to create a holistic and complete picture of each customer. Moreover, they can see a customer’s purchase and interaction history with the brand.
They can then leverage this information goldmine to create accurate buyer personas and inform their sales tactics and communications strategies. These tactics and communications can be personalized and tailored to impress and delight customers. By doing this consistently, they can deliver better and smoother buying experiences. In the long term, they can build trust-based customer relationships that increase sales win rates and improve retention rates.
Conclusion
One 2020 study suggests that 90% of sales and marketing professionals point to disconnects between their departments in terms of strategy, process, content, and culture. Don’t let this be the story of your e-commerce brand.
Sales-marketing alignment can create amazing results in terms of higher conversions, retention, sales, and profits. It can also help your firm refine its product positioning and targeting strategy, to further boost conversions and even improve its competitive posture.
If you need help nailing your e-commerce brand’s marketing-sales alignment, contact us. We can help you create a common strategy and goals for these teams, devise a communication plan, and leverage the right tools to improve collaboration and knowledge-sharing.
