Top 4 Sales and Marketing Alignment Best Practices in Manufacturing

July 31, 2019 | 3 minute read

A large chunk of a company’s budget is typically directed to the sales department. They are the ones who make the money, after all! However, there are slow times in every company where the sales team probably complains about the lack of leads.

The marketing department spends a large part of their day reaching out looking for those leads. However, in the manufacturing industry, only 8% of the budget is directed towards marketing. Often times the lack of alignment between the sales and marketing departments results in potential customers being lost. Leads (and money!) are falling through the cracks. HubSpot explains just how serious this problem actually is:

Misalignment between sales and marketing costs $1 trillion per year - that’s trillion with a T!
79% of leads never convert to sales.
Of the leads that get passed to salespeople, 73% are never contacted.

How to Adopt the Top 4 Sales and Marketing Alignment Best Practices

Misalignment between sales and marketing is prevalent - so how can you fix it?

1. Email Automation

Automated emails are set up to nurture leads into customers. In fact, automated email messages average 70.5% higher open rates than typical marketing messages. If a sales team has the ability to know which emails are being read, they can work with the marketing department to tailor content effectively.

2. Lead Scoring

Lead scoring is the methodology of awarding points to leads for certain actions taken in conjunction with your company—typically online. You can also automate the lead scoring process so that it happens automatically in the background. Automatic scores are given to each lead for any action you have determined deserves a score. The system can also automatically send notifications to a sales rep so they can follow up with a specific lead. If marketing is aware of what content gets the highest score, they will be able to build on that content instead of spending time on content that no one is engaging with.

3. Persona Development

persona development for marketing and sales alignment Your sales team is constantly in contact with customers and distributors and knows all the nitty-gritty details about the people that buy from you. Creating personas means identifying all of the important details about your target market. Once you are clear about who it is you are selling to, it will be much easier to actually sell. Since the sales team truly knows the customers, it would be advantageous to have them working collaboratively with marketing to explain the personas in detail.

4. Content Creation

Typically the sales team leaves the content creation to the marketing team. However, if everyone is involved in the process, the content will be that much stronger. Plus, if the sales team is involved, they will be able to rapidly link to content when they are speaking to a potential client. Clients will be much more receptive to content they feel is hand-picked for them.

Sales Results That You Can't Miss Out On

In order to maximize sales through lead conversion, you need to pay attention to sales and marketing alignment best practices. If all team members are truly working cooperatively, customers will feel like every base is covered and their problems are heard and understood.