Sales and marketing don’t always see eye to eye, and that’s to be expected.
Marketers focus on building long-term trust by writing educational content for brands. Meanwhile, salespeople are honed in on sending a marketing message that converts.
While marketing and sales teams have different responsibilities and goals, their work overlaps in more ways than you might think. Just like your marketing team, sales wants content your brand publishes to address buyer concerns and challenges.
Not to mention, salespeople are talking to suppliers and other industry professionals daily. They have firsthand insight into what your audience actually cares about.
In just a half hour or less, a joint team meeting can align sales and marketing on what’s best for your brand as well as your buyers.
Addressing the Elephant in the Room
To be fully transparent, there are some fundamental issues that team meetings won’t resolve.
Marketing plays the long game to optimize for brand awareness, while sales is focused on short-term goals like making a sale and meeting monthly or quarterly quotas.
This difference in timelines creates tension for both teams. If marketing and sales don’t communicate, this tension can turn into misalignment, lost deals, and inconsistent brand messaging.
Regular team meetings won’t eliminate that tension, but they help keep both teams on the same page.
Rather than pointing out what the other team did wrong, marketing and sales can better align on what’s actually working for your brand.
A meeting gives sales a platform to voice what’s working and where leads fall short, while marketing is given a chance to explain their campaign goals and messaging choices.
When sales and marketing share a common goal, they stop working in silos and start moving in the same direction.
Making These Meetings Work
The most successful team meetings include input from both sales and marketing. Here’s how both teams can contribute to these meetings.
Marketing:
- Share your campaign calendar. Let your sales team know about upcoming webinars or content themes so they can better plan their client outreach.
- Manage sales’ expectations. Make sure your sales team knows whether a piece of content is meant for brand awareness, education, or conversion so they can use it in their client conversations effectively.
- Give your sales team content and context. Don’t just send your sales reps a link. Explain what you’re sending them and how they can use it in their conversations with clients.
- Share performance metrics. Give your sales team insights they can use – they want to know what’s influencing deals and shortening sales cycles.
- Use sales calls for research purposes. Ask sales to write down recurring questions, customer objections, and competitor mentions so you can send a stronger message and improve your brand’s positioning.
Sales:
- Share what you’re hearing from your clients. You talk to prospective buyers daily. The questions they have and the problems they face will help your marketing team create more effective campaigns.
- Manage client expectations. Never oversell what your marketing team can deliver. Setting clear boundaries will protect your client and your brand.
- Let marketing know about important accounts. If you’re close to closing a big deal, keep marketing in the loop. This will help them create tailored marketing assets that could accelerate the close.
- Sell based on marketing’s content calendar. Use upcoming marketing campaigns to show prospective clients what’s coming down the pike to build trust and position your outreach within a broader narrative.
- Be mindful of marketing’s boundaries. The better you understand marketing’s bandwidth and what they can deliver, the more realistic your requests will be and the stronger your partnership will become.
When all of these bullet points are covered during team meetings, sales and marketing will get on the same page in no time.
Don’t Wait for Conflict to Collaborate
Sales and marketing don’t have the same goals, and that’s OK. They were hired for different reasons. But the cost of silence between these teams is more than just tension. Your brand could lose revenue, hurt client relationships, and slow down close rates.
Having both teams meet regularly will ensure your brand sends a stronger marketing message, shortens the sales cycle, and builds stronger trust with buyers.
Do you have your next sales-marketing meeting on the calendar? If not, schedule your first one this week, even if it’s only a 15-minute touch base.
The sooner the conversation starts, the sooner your brand can move forward with a unified voice that earns trust and drives results.