Six strategies on how to bridge the sales and marketing gap

1. (Re)Align goals
Its important for sales and marketing teams to remember that they are in it together. Marketing enables sales by generating leads that turn into customers, while sales secures marketing by generating revenue that goes into the marketing budget. One of the best ways to get both departments aligned is to use marketing automation that gives a single funnel view of both processes.

2. Start talking
The marketing team should communicate its awesomeness to the sales team by letting them know what theyre working on. This can include an upcoming webinar or newsletter. When sales gets a heads up on what marketing has in development, they can use that info to move prospects through the pipeline. On the flip side, sales should let marketing know where the best leads are coming from.

3. Create content that moves
Content is more than conversion bait. Marketing should start with the end in mind and map content to the sales cycle: from top of the funnel and lead generation, to mid funnel, to bottom of the funnel.

4. Collaborate on grading
Sales will benefit from sharing with marketing what their ideal prospect is so marketing knows who to target. While marketing might think that a prospects geography and revenue are most important, sales may actually prefer to choose prospects based on role and industry. Confirming what the ideal prospect is helps both teams maximize efforts.

5. Dont hoard, empower
Both marketing and sales can empower each other by sharing information in customer relationship management system (CRM). This can result in a massive return on investment (ROI). But use this material carefully. Sales can avoid being creepy when calling prospects by not revealing everything they know about them.

6. Wiretap
Marketing should listen in on sales calls. Not only is it good to see people at ones company do their job really well, it will also help indicate to marketing what sales needs are. Other ways marketing can get the inside scoop is to go through new sales training, read the sales playbook, and periodically attend sales meetings.

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