Moreover, the alignment of marketing and sales hard in the age of inside sales. For the alignment of sales and marketing, there are not many opportunities. This is because of lower price point and shorter sales cycle. For the success of your business, it is imperative to have sales and marketing alignment. In order to have inside sales that work well with marketing it is better to follow these tips.
Take a look at the tips on how to align marketing with inside sales.
Building Respect Between Both the Departments
One of the best way to have alignment of marketing and inside sales is building respect. You can decrease the number of cold leads and increase the number of customers. This is a great way to ensure they appreciate each other. When both the departments encourage the potential of each other, they will have a balance. They will be more willing to have an effective alignment that will lead to the growth of the business.
When you have an experienced sales team they can close customer deals generating more revenue. In this way, the team will make sure the efforts of the marketing are not wasted.
Have Sales Qualifiers
When you decide that you need an alignment, you will be playing both the sides. Marketing is holding onto the leads for longer periods, it is better to have someone who has a sales background. The reason to have someone to focus on developing relationships. This will lead to giving better quality leads to the sales team.
Have Transparent Pricing
In today’s advanced world, consumers have a way to get more information. 60% of the sales cycle is finished by the buyers before they talk to the representative. The consumers ask for transparent prices so they can buy products that fit their budget. Having a transparent pricing has many benefits other than being affordable. They include:
Lower friction
Inside sales cycles are shorter in comparison to the field sales. In order to put up with shorter sales cycles, you want buyers to make buying decisions fast. With the help of transparent prices, you can make sure sales team spend the minimum amount of time on pricing. They must focus on another task like sharing benefits of your product.
Qualified Leads
Through transparent pricing, your customer can determine whether your product is fit for their budget and requirement or not. If the product is a perfect fit, they will reach out to you. In this way, only good leads go to your sales team.
Moreover, it is better to have a pricing that is easily understandable. You can have different pricing depending on features and users. But you must keep in mind it must not be complex. Having complicated pricing can stretch the sales cycle. Therefore, by guiding marketing to have transparent pricing, decision making process for the buyers will be made easy. Along with this, it will help the sales team as well.
Flexible Campaigns
You must adopt flexible campaigns as this enables you to generate more data. You can start an innovative marketing campaign or get a lot of actionable data within few hours. If the data surpasses the standard, you can pass the leads to your sales team.
On the other hand, inside sales can produce results quickly. After the leads start coming in, a skilled sales team can close them in days. Due to the shorter sales cycles, your marketing team can have a continuous opinion on the efficacy of the campaign.
To have a successful campaign, your sales representatives and marketing team must be in contact. The marketing team must get feedback from the sales team. What works the best and what is not effective or efficient. When you use sales dialers, you can gain insight into what works best and what doesn’t. The marketing team can use this information to improve the campaigns for better results.
Have Leads Quota
The sales team’s performance depends on the number of leads it gets. The higher number of leads is, the more it can sell. As previously mentioned, inside sales have shorter sales cycle. The inside sales representatives are not restricted by any limits. This allows them to manage a higher number of leads.
However, in order to be successful, sales team requires a persistent flow of qualified leads. This is why marketing team has monthly leads quota. In case the marketing team is unable to send leads to the sales team, the sales team will have difficulty meeting its target. This is bad for moral and alignment of marketing and sales.
To meet the leads quota, the sales and marketing team must work in collaboration. They must determine together what lead is qualified and which is not. Therefore, you must give your marketing team leads quota along with a defined metrics. This is imperative for the alignment of marketing and inside sales team.
Involvement in Sales Process
It is unavoidable that your customer will have objections in the sales process. The success of your product depends on how efficiently the sales representative can help them. But if you involve the marketing team, you can get more successful. This will save the time of your representative as they spend almost 30 hours a month in the fabricating sales material.
In this way, the marketing team can provide the sales team with detailed information. As a result, the inside sales will answer the questions of the consumers in a reliable manner. Therefore, skillfully produced information will be better than a quickly drafted email by a sales representative.
Compensation Must be Associated with Sales Performance
Your variable reward must depend on the inside sales goal. This is to ensure the perfect alignment of the inside sales and marketing. This is because a portion of its reward will be associated with the role of the marketing team in the sales cycles.
Furthermore, the sales team believes the marketing team gets reimbursed while they do all the hard work. When the reward is related to sales goal, the marketing will be more involved in helping sales accomplish their goal. As a result, it will lead to better alignment of sales and marketing.
Service Level Agreement
One of the biggest problems in the alignment is the difficulty in handling. It is best to have an accountability into the process. With the help of Service Level Agreement, you can make sure everyone is doing their job. But the real value of Service Level Agreement is that you learn when you track and measure regularly.
In the end, the alignment of inside sales and marketing will assist in selling more. It will help you produce a sales and marketing alignment that is essential for the success of the business. An important thing to keep in mind is that the building sales and marketing alignment are a process. It might take up to 18 months to have clarity and consistency to achieve predicted results. With the help of sales dialers you can align marketing and sales.
