Brand ThinkingCommunicationConsumer Insights

Creating a stronger sales and marketing partnership

In many companies, branding, marketing and sales teams work in silos, leaving each team to develop their own goals, strategies and tactics toward accomplishing business objectives. All three teams are essential for business growth, and for companies to achieve long-term success, branding, marketing and sales must unite around shared goals.

Ensuring that all three teams are on the same page is easier said than done. Even when companies have established a strong brand, if sales and marketing are not working together toward shared goals, companies run the risk of wasting time and money, and duplicating (or even worse, undermining) their own efforts.

In our experience working with companies of all sizes on marketing and sales programs, we’ve observed a few things that lead to the greatest chance for success:

1. Start with business goals and KPIs.

Marketing plans and sales strategies don’t exist in a vacuum; they exist to help companies reach their business goals. Using key performance indicators and sales goals to build marketing plans means plans can be built specifically to support the sales strategies that will help achieve those KPIs. And the marketing team is better able to understand not only what each team is doing but why it matters, and how their roles contribute to the shared goals. This results in more aligned workstreams, better defined accountabilities and ultimately, shared success when goals are reached.

2. Get your brand together.

Ensuring your brand is in order – that everyone knows who you are, what you do and why it matters – establishes a strong foundation for all sales and marketing efforts. With a clear story in place, sales and marketing can tell a consistent story across customer touchpoints and ensure that everything is working together to communicate the brand. This means that sales and marketing touchpoints reinforce each other and create a more seamless and distinctive customer experience throughout the purchase path.

3. Sync up your sales pitch and marketing efforts.

When was the last time your marketing team attended a sales call? Was your sales team invited to a workshop about the new brand or a presentation to unveil the latest marketing campaign? When sales and marketing teams don’t talk to each other they can’t help each other. We see this issue manifest most frequently in sales decks that don’t tell a clear brand story, marketing collateral that doesn’t support the sales process or marketing-generated leads that don’t get to the sales team. By truly partnering with your sales or marketing counterparts, you will create more effective tools that better support your efforts across the board.

Simple Truth’s work with clients like Allstate underscores the value of aligning a strong corporate brand across sales and marketing efforts and tying each team’s work to shared business goals. How can your company do the same?