Often times an organization's marketing and sales teams are like the Jets and the Sharks from West Side Story. You would love for them to just get along all the time, but they are on different wavelengths. Your marketing team works in their bubble while the sales team works in a separate bubble. Using two simple tools, you could work to combine the two teams' efforts into one process.
CRM Software
If you have ever been on a sales team you are familiar with a CRM. This handy tool is great for tracking calls, scheduling appointments, taking notes, and tracking sales. Everything a salesperson needs with the exception of the phone and leads to make this tool powerful. CRM software is often overlooked by the marketing team because they feel that they filled the CRM with leads, and now it is on the sales team to make something happen with the leads using this tool.
We should stomp out this frame of thought. Segmentation is a word that email marketers love to use, but without the use of a CRM can they really expect to gather all the data they can about an individual? Sure most email marketing solutions can segment by things like name or location, but when you can take that a step further you will start fostering stronger relationships with your email marketing audience.
Picture a world where your marketing team uses a CRM in concert with their email marketing efforts to increase targeted messaging to prospects and clients. When you make an effort to know something about your audience you will see positive results when you connect with them.
Email Marketing
Email marketing may be a crucial piece of your marketing strategy. However, how often is your sales team involved in email marketing? Never? If this is you then listen up! Email marketing is just as valuable to you for gaining new prospects as it is for closing current ones.
Think about sitting down with your sales and marketing team to brainstorm some ways that your marketing team can provide the sales team with emails that will help make the prospecting easier for the sales team as well as the prospect. One way we have used email marketing with our sales team is through video voicemails. If you are curious how a video voicemail works check out this video voicemail case study as well as this great discussion and examples of video voicemail.
Using something like this will help your sales team break the ice with prospects, and increase the connection rate. Your sales team and prospects' time is valuable. By identifying those that are interested with email marketing you can save your sales team a lot of time.
Working In Harmony
By overlapping both departments into these two solutions you can make a more cohesive team, and the best part is that your prospects and clients benefit because they are getting more personal interactions with your team.