Too often, the sales team and the marketing team each evolve on their own , even though they are both main actors in the buying journey . The relationship between these two once “rival” but yet complementary teams is a source of friction .
However, there are solutions to reduce or even annihilate
them, such as SMARKETING , a management technique to effectively align these
two services and derive medium-long-term benefits, for you and your customers.
Our explanations in this article dedicated to Smartketing .
Definition of smartketing
Smarketing consists of aligning the sales team and the
marketing team of the same company around common objectives , in particular in
order to:
• to better
engage audiences ,
• to
improve the prospects of support
• to
perfect the techniques and the sales process
• to reduce
friction in the buy journey and ultimately to increase revenue .
The interest of applying smarketing
One of the goals of a business is to make a profit , so
selling as an engine of growth is an essential element to achieve this goal.
This phase has long been the prerogative of salespeople .
This is true, or almost true, because even if they are the ones who conclude
the sale, the fact remains that the
marketing actions carried out must generate prospects and therefore feed the
commercial pipe .
As said above, the relations between these teams are often
complicated . The effect of smarketing is to break the ice and restore the
current between the marketing and sales team in order to define a
“collaboration contract” (we speak of SLA in the jargon for Service Level
Agreement) between these two services.
Why ?
• the
marketers must undertake to send qualified leads to sales , this transition is
important for improving business performance and generate revenue.
• For their
part, salespeople must commit to taking charge of them quickly , recording
information in a CRM (customer relationship management tool) and ensuring
rigorous monitoring so that marketers can exploit the data .
Ideally, you should think of the sales team and the
marketing team as two halves of one and the same team . Basically, your
marketers become sellers and v-salespeople are more interested in the
acquisition process like marketers.
What results?
According to Hubspot, companies with aligned sales and
marketing teams are seeing a 20% increase in annual revenue . The figures are
revealing, especially since companies ignorant of this management style see on
average a 4% drop in their turnover .
How to apply Smarketing?
Aligning two teams that are not used to working together may
not be easy and will not happen with a wave of a magic wand or because you have
decreed it.
So how do you go about setting up an efficient organization
?
A. Define SMART or OKR goals
First of all, the sales team and the marketing team must
share common objectives . Gather these teams around a table and clearly present
your SMART goals to them :
• Specific
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Realistic
• Temporary
In this way, all employees will be able to establish an
action plan to carry out their actions in order to achieve the expected result.
Here is an example :
In this example, the goal is to achieve € 100,000 in sales.
By knowing your market and your current position, you will be able to set
clearly defined goals for your teams .
If you choose the OKR method (Objective & Key Results in
VO), to organize work and align teams, you will be able to have an overview of
the company's objectives with the means that will be implemented to achieve
them.
The OKRs are divided into objectives and 4 key results over
periods of three months, to remain agile and to be able to measure progress in
real time.
OKRs are an "old" method of management and
organization of work invented in 1983 by Andy Grove, (one of the founders of
Intel) and very popular in French companies which are inspired by US majors
such as Google, Netflix, Facebook and others.
Whatever method is chosen, we know from experience that
without clear and shared objectives, there is no team alignment.
B. Define the persona (s)
Who are we for? To get the two teams to agree, a working
session around the ideal targets ( personas in marketing jargon) is essential .
According to our experience, we have seen several cases
where commercial in the same company n 'not have the same definition of the
target customer . Ditto for marketing and after-sales service / customer
support. This exercise is very enriching for the employees of your two teams.
Defining the persona (s)
together to have the same vision of the targeted customer and
accordingly establish defined objectives is therefore essential. This is the
very foundation of alignment.
C. The contract of trust: the
SLA
Without paraphrasing a famous household appliance brand,
this contract between your teams is a fundamental commitment .
SLA Smarketing is a document that defines the terms of
service between two parties . In our case, here, the objective is to
“contractually” bind the marketing team and the sales team. This document
explains :
• The
targeted persona
• Goals
• The role
• The
obligations
• The
protocol related to lead management
• How does
the transfer take place?
• Compensation
(which must be based on common commercial and marketing objectives)
With this type of commitment, it will then be easier to
analyze performance and adjust future actions.
D. Feedback: “Feedback is
gold”
Usually, after sales reps have tapped into the
marketer-generated contact base, the same pattern repeats itself with no
feedback. The ideal would be to take advantage of the cohesion created to
provide feedback to marketers . This transparency is beneficial from all points
of view when it is fluid:
• better
coordination
• more
detailed activity analysis
• increased
employee productivity
Example :
In this example shown above, it is clear that the problem is
with switching from MQL to SQL. This therefore gives you a more precise idea of
the actions to be taken to correct this error.
Salespeople must be transparent about their results so that
marketing can know the results and if necessary, take corrective actions.
Evolution of the smartketing model
In the conversion funnel example , however , the customer is
the end of the process, but is not at the center of it , while everyone
lectures anyone who wants to hear that their business is “customer centric”. ”.
The tunnel additionally adds further friction between sales
and marketing as it is supposed to align the two departments with the same
goals and the same vision.
It is important to take this development into account for
your teams.