What Does it Take to Build a Successful Sales and Marketing Team?

Building a successful sales team depends as much on the people you hire as it does on nurturing a cohesive and productive relationship between sales and marketing.

Working side by side, the sales and marketing teams represent the growth engine that will propel your business forward.

However, getting both of these entities on the same page is just as big a challenge today as ever. Let’s delve into 4 of the best ways to get marketing and sales to work together.

1) Onboarding Team Culture

It starts with the right people… and hasn’t it always?

Having said this, building a successful team does not develop overnight. While every potential employee carries his or her own unique set of strengths and weaknesses, both sales and marketing teams should consist of members with varying degrees of integrity, loyalty, creativity, ambition, and tenacity.

A foundation of these shared values goes a long way in creating a happy and productive organizational culture.

2) Sharing is Caring

The sharing of resources is critical for both sales and marketing teams to function cohesively. Follow these three principals to prioritize sharing between the two teams.

• All of your company’s relevant marketing communications, such as presentations, brochures, and mailers - which have been carefully written to effectively describe your product, need to be easily accessible by the sales team on a shared drive.

• Every content marketing campaign should be coordinated with the sales team so that all sales members can be adequately knowledgeable on the main talking points and other relevant details of the promotion. This can be accomplished by creating a shared Google calendar that can be edited and easily referenced by both teams.

• The sales team needs to play a role in the content creation process. Given that they are constantly updated on the needs of prospective customers, the sales team is a useful resource for the marketing department, and should regularly give their input during weekly brainstorming sessions— or on a shared Google document.

3) Let’s Get Together

By scheduling regular bi-weekly meetings, sales and marketing teams can build an effective exchange of ideas and cooperation. These meetings will go a long way in terms of getting everyone on the same page. In addition to brainstorming on new ideas, a regular meeting gives both teams the opportunity to share important KPIs related to lead generation, conversion optimization, and market analysis. In addition, attending industry events and conferences together and coordinating fun company outings will also go a long way in developing rapport between the two teams while outside of the office.

4) Listen Up

While strong marketing analytics are imperative to the success of any marketing campaign, the marketing team must also have an intimate understanding of who their audience is.

There is no better way of gaining this understanding than by listening to sales calls. Marketers will gain new ideas for content creation and develop a more personal narrative for their content that is more in touch with the actual needs of prospective clients. Additionally, they will learn which techniques are most effective for the sales team, offering valuable insight into which selling points connect the most with the target audience.

To learn more about what it takes to build a successful sales and marketing team, join us for our upcoming webinar, “What Does it Take to Grow a Predictable Marketing and Sales Organization?”, hosted by Penguin Strategies and featuring VP Global Partner Program & Strategy at HubSpot, David McNeil.