Smarketing – sales and marketing team up
Merging sales and marketing in the smarketing method
Decision makers always want a highly effective symbiosis. What has always seemed impossible in most companies has become reality through the fusion of sales and marketing in the smarketing method.
Decision makers always want a highly effective symbiosis. What has always seemed impossible in most companies has become reality through the fusion of sales and marketing in the smarketing method.
We are talking about much more than “just” interlocked cooperation of the sales department with the communications department. It is a logical component that the sales department looks in the same direction as the marketing strategy of the company.
If marketing has very clearly identified and defined a target group, why should I as a sales person not follow this path? What reason would there be not to get most of the products I can sell as a company to my customers through happy sales people?
If this customer group promises the most chances of success based on the analyses and strategic orientation, it is an entrepreneurially valuable decision to combine sales and marketing.
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Different approach – but always the same goal
Why have there been and continue to be challenges to collaboration in both camps? Because each side takes a different approach to the solution. But the goal is the same in both cases: Revenue. Because without sales, neither department has any economic justification in the company.
Everything that is developed in marketing in terms of concepts and strategies needs to be checked to see whether it works in the market. And who can “test” this better than the salesperson in direct contact with the customers or those who are to become customers?
“Without sales, neither department has any economic justification in the company. “
The practice often looks different. We experience it almost every day in our consulting work. “We don’t need marketing” is common practice, especially in medium-sized companies. As a consequence, there is no definition of the persona buyer, no strategy definition of the target customers and no clearly outlined target markets.
Every presentation looks different, there is no uniform external image. That may all still work. But the most difficult thing is that the sales department has to manage the entire turnover. Sales is lived without marketing flanking it and thus opening doors. Something like a digital sales guide is needed.
Why separate what works better together?
Digitization has called a lot of things into question in many companies: Processes, structures, marketing. Inbound or content marketing and lead development with CRM systems already take place exclusively online.
What has been forgotten? Correct: the customer with his ubiquitous online-supported purchase decision inherently ensures that the boundaries between sales and marketing are blurred. So marketers and sales people are already playing on the same team.
Smarketing helps them understand together. And win. Sales needs marketing because marketing aligns the entire company with the market and defines who has what market needs. Sales needs marketing as an enabler and companion on the path to sales.
“It’s about a kind of “complicity” between marketing and sales.”
Marketing needs sales because concepts and strategies have to be tested on the market. Sales plays reality back into the company in a direct way. It knows what the market wants out there. The sales process determines whether money is earned or not.
The goal of smarketing is to achieve common, measurable goals within the company and to assign mutual responsibilities and, above all, territories to each other. It is about a kind of “complicity” between marketing and sales.
With a single and common task: to increase the company’s sales.
For such a task, the smarketing concept can be used as a kind of digital sales navigator. A navigator for sales optimization and sales increase and improvement in reach and image.
Sales and marketing: Love each other
In a post on Linkedin, a CEO was so fed up with the sales and marketing struggle that he threatened to lock the CSO and CMO in an office together. Until they speak a common language. For any Sales expert, this is not a threat at all. It’s a great idea!
The sales person is struggling mumbling about trying to turn cold contacts into contracts. The marketer is too often talking up the world for the sales professional to really put these thoughts and ideas on the road with horsepower. Because it’s all about money. Always.
The idea of smarketing says, “Please dear Marketing: align your actions to make the sales person love you because you’re preparing the red carpet for the sales process to travel on.”
Please dear Sales: “Give Marketing the feedback they need to understand you that only your customers pay your salary.”
Both teams, both sides are super experts, scramble together and work hand in hand, you are so close and can accomplish so much together.
Smarketing is the future
The symbiosis of smart marketing and digital sales gives a competitive edge. Only a few companies have used this method so far.
The implementation of smarketing is an ongoing and living process. It adapts to changes in the markets. It responds to technology, competition and customer demand. So for the entrepreneur, the motto “trust the change” applies more than ever. Because your environment is changing. Almost daily.
A “digital sales guide” is a first and very comprehensive impulse to firmly forge the symbiosis. It asks the decisive questions for more sales and provides concrete answers that can be implemented immediately.
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