In previous generations, salespeople were the buyer’s primary source for research and education. Today’s savvy buyers, however, have already scoured the Internet and studied the product before walking into the first sales meeting. Since so much of the sale is already made before the salesperson enters the room, today’s marketers play a bigger role in educating prospects than they ever have before. Today’s marketers hold many of the tools needed for educating the prospect, so the most successful businesses encourage intense collaboration between both sales and marketing while working hard to align the two departments.

Common Touch Points: Where Sales and Marketing Merge

If the sales and marketing divisions aren’t aligned, it is simply not possible to work toward the company’s vision. When numbers are down, salespeople tend to sell whatever they can just for the sake of selling, and marketers often pop out novelty campaigns that aren’t necessarily in line with the business plan.

With both channels independently doing things just to boost numbers, there is no consistency in brand, position and route to market.

Instead, both departments should look for common touch points where marketing and sales naturally merge, including:

• The buyer’s journey: Both sales and marketing have a stake in understanding the buyer’s journey. Prospects take a lot of baby steps on their path to becoming buyers. Marketing and sales should get together, share information and make sure they both understand the customer’s purchasing journey. A good exercise is to start at the end and work backward. What did the buyer do right before signing the contract, right before that, and so on.
• Analyzing the competition: Both sales and marketing have valuable insight into the business’s competition. Both divisions — and the company as a whole — benefit with open, transparent information sharing regarding industry competitors.
• Identifying differentiators: Once they get together to analyze the competition, both sales and marketing departments are invested in developing a clear, articulable understanding of what separates their product or service from that of their competitors.
• Customer profiles and personas: It is critical for both sales and marketing to know their audiences. Both should collaborate to develop and update their customer personas and buyer profiles.

Unfocused, short-term strategies don’t work in either department. Sales and marketing leaders should meet regularly; they should share information and work to tear down interdepartmental barriers. When they meet, everyone should have a voice, and respective division representatives should share the responsibility of leading the discussion. When these meetings become routine, both departments are in a better position to educate, nurture and serve their buyers.