Any sales organization, any company or business that relies on sales to gain profits and remain competitive has multiple departments that operate towards different goals, of which sales and marketing are the most customer-oriented ones. These function represent a benchmark for the consumers and come together to create the best possible image of a certain brand, company or product. Or at least, they should. This is where sales and marketing alignment comes in, a concept that refers to ensuring that the two vital departments of a company work together effectively to ensure the best market image and engage consumers, therefore boosting sales and profits. Many businesses have made numerous common mistakes in trying quick fixes to the problem of improving sales, such as hiring more sale representatives or generating more leads, without having a clear, decisive process of improving the collaboration between marketing and sales. None of these methods gave any long lasting result, because the underlying issue as far as boosting sales and profits is concerned is proper and centralized cooperation between the marketing team and the sales team. Strictly speaking, sales and marketing alignment is about making these two forces work together more effectively. In response, the company gains higher performance, therefore more return, and less risk. Studies have shown that companies investing in the proper collaboration between the marketing and sales teams enjoy up to 27% more sales revenue and up to 36% greater gross profit. Furthermore, by adopting these improvement strategies, the company’s CEOs and CFOs will be able to acknowledge and implement the latest techniques for marketing and sales productivity growth, but also for the growth of profit margins and revenue. As far as the sales department is concerned, this type of alignment will help boost representatives’ selling time and retain top sales performers, while the marketing department will be able to identify and eliminate under-performing initiatives. As a result, the over all performance and productivity will grow, sales will increase without the increase of costs and therefore companies will be able to boost profits. Even though we live in an era where technology and gadgets dominate most of the fields, without the human factors, everything else ads up to nothing, which is why even the biggest companies and organizations still invest in experiential marketing and sales representatives. Human process is important, but in order to work, companies need to acknowledge the vital importance of sales and marketing alignment and act accordingly. As a result, sales representatives will be able to better understand marketing leads, therefore spend less time creating their own material and more time selling, all of which will lead to increased profits. The bottom line is that whatever field of operations your company has, it is certainly a competitive one, as technology advances and consumers’ behaviors change more rapidly than ever. To that effect, boosting profits may be a real problem, but strategies such as aligning your marketing and sales forces properly will most certainly help you take care of that problem. To learn more about sales and marketing or about sales and marketing alignment, please click on the links here.
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