Does your company also have a separate marketing department and sales department? If so, do you also recognize the love-hate relationship that often exists between these two departments? The atmosphere there is often even more like water and fire! Marketing accuses sales of not empathizing enough with the target group, the positioning and the customer. In turn, sales accuses the marketing department of placing too little emphasis on lead generation and sales through the marketing channels. The two departments often hardly work together, or worse, work against each other and that does not benefit the result!

Marketing mindset

John Jantsch, a well-known consultant and writer recently published a book called 'Duct Tape Marketing, The Commitment Engine and The Referral Engine'. In a interview on Forbes he emphasizes that sales people should think more with a marketing mindset. They could place more emphasis on ideal customer profiles (instead of just selling as much as possible), reputation, value proposition and educating and advising the customer. However, it is not only sales people who need to change their mindset. The marketing department must also learn to think more from a sales perspective! So place more emphasis on concrete CTAs in marketing messages and on sustainable relationships with customers and leads, instead of purely on communicating the marketing message to a large group.

Does your company also have a separate marketing department and sales department? If so, do you also recognize the love-hate relationship that often exists between these two departments? The atmosphere there is often even more like water and fire! Marketing accuses sales of not empathizing enough with the target group, the positioning and the customer. In turn, sales accuses the marketing department of placing too little emphasis on lead generation and sales through the marketing channels. The two departments often hardly work together, or worse, work against each other and that does not benefit the result!

Example from my own kitchen

At Kenneth Smit we have personally experienced that a well-oiled collaboration between marketing activities and sales activities can provide added value. A good example of this is the use of social media such as Facebook and LinkedIn. Marketers often say that social media channels cannot be measured directly on sales and should mainly be used to reach and connect with the target group. However, practice shows us something different! By ensuring substantively strong content that is really useful to the target group (marketing mindset), and building social media networks and relationships (sales mindset), we see an increase in the number of leads for our workouts.

The most important thing is to link the two goals and allow them to support each other. Writing catchy and informative content is really a task for marketers, you can leave it to them. After all, it is their job! However, in the end conversion must be achieved that the sales people can take advantage of... right? In short, through targeted content that really helps your target group, you make it clear what your company can do. They are then guided through your company's offering, resulting in completed application forms and contacts. In this way, the circle is almost complete and marketing and sales work together to increase the number of high-quality leads. The sales department then has the task of connecting their relations to your company's social media network, to complete the circle completely.

Merge everything that was good into something better!

And we are not the only ones who see the effect of collaboration between Sales and use marketing! Take Delta Lloyd for example, whose main goal is to grow into the top 3 insurers in the Netherlands and wants to take major steps towards this. Active in both private and business markets, the organization is setting up a new organization. And what do you think? In the new organization, sales and marketing are no longer completely separate departments. Under the guise of 'everything that was good has been combined to make it better', we speak of the marketing & sales department. Until recently, Delta Lloyd used different blood groups for call center employees, online marketers, staff employees, etc. Now everything is combined with one unifying characteristic: 100% focus on customer interests!

Would you like to know more about marketing and sales? Download now white paper on sales and marketing.