Smarketing is the fancy combination of the words “Sales” and “Marketing”. It is the term used to describe Marketing and Sales alignment. As you may or may not know, this is one of the keys to a successful Sales Enablement strategy. The goal of Smarketing is that both teams collaborate better to achieve common goals and greater efficiency. This will eventually into a leaner sales process that enhances rate and profitability. In fact, 87% of sales and marketing leaders affirm that collaboration between both teams enables critical business growth.
In this context, we took the time to compile 6 quick Smarketing tips that can give your company a kickstart in the matter.
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1. Enable collaboration and communication
The first step to achieve Marketing and Sales alignment is to narrow the gap between both teams. They can collaborate more effectively by creating a virtuous circle through their communication. Sales operates using the material and information handed by the marketing department. The latter uses ground feedback from salespeople to develop more precise and high-quality content to better address prospects.
To achieve this, communication has to be streamlined through discussion channels, group chats, and scheduled meetings. Moreover, content needs to be centralized so both teams can access it easily. In this context, our platform, Bricks.ai, enables marketers to upload and update content for salespeople to use according to their needs. They can create a hyper personalized presentation with marketing-approved content in just a few seconds.
2. Stay operationally aligned
It might seem obvious as Smarketing strives for alignment, but staying on the same page operationally can be tricky. In practical terms, it translates to marketing and sales managers meeting regularly (once a week for example) to align their strategy, discuss key challenges, initiatives and results.
Moreover, managers should also encourage team members to participate in cross-department meetings to share their updates and provide direct feedback on what is working well and what can be improved. A key part of this is staying transparent: feedback helps improve the strategy, so it is always welcome as long as it is constructive for both parties.
3. Focus on the whole sales funnel
Smarketing operates at every stage of the funnel, so it is essential to focus on optimizing it as a whole. When the sales funnel is working optimally, marketers can easily analyze it from the data available. For example, it is easier to pinpoint where prospects often drop out or what kind of content is more convincing.
Understanding the sales funnel is therefore useful for marketing as they can create better and more specific content for lead generation. Salespeople also benefit from this as it helps identifying strategic points leading to conversion.
4. Create buyer centric content (as opposed to product centric)
Smarketing isn’t about Sales and Marketing focusing on each other, but rather about both teams fully focusing on the customer and working together to satisfy their needs. Prospects have a problem and they need to understand how your solution can help them solve it. Whether they are on an exploration phase or well documented, content needs to be on-point to address their issues.
Aligning both teams through a solid content strategy will increase closing rates as leads are nurtured with targeted material.
5. Define common smarketing goals
As mentioned above, Smarketing aims for better collaboration between both teams by creating enabled communication opportunities, aligned processes, and strategy. But, what is a strategy without a clear set of goals? Not much: aligned goals are the base for an effective alliance between both teams.
To create this set of goals, both teams need to start by cross-analyzing their data and coordinating their end-game. Once the global goals are set, they can be declined in several smaller goals scheduled in time. These smaller achievements need to be tracked by following key metrics and discussing them during the cross-team meetings previously mentioned.
6. Ensure it is not about “credit”
Last but not least, it is key to remember that Smarketing is about creating an alliance and not a rivalry. Goals are measured but that does not mean that one team gets more credit for achievement than the other.
To promote this behavior, credit for achievements should not be viewed as binary. Instead, the idea is to take a nuanced approach to visualize the way each team contributed to making that particular deal successful. Remember, at the end of the day Smarketing benefits both teams individually and the company as a whole.