Difference Between Sales and Marketing

Use a sales CRM that removes silos between teams

CRM systems streamline the process of aggregating data and sharing views between teams. Though aligning sales and marketing does more than cut costs and share tools across departments—removing silos between teams can dramatically improve a company’s performance. The Zendesk State of Sales report includes a few examples:

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  When Standard Beverage pivoted to aligning the team with a simple CRM, it saw a 300 percent increase in accounts.
  
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  Wavy reached a 25 percent conversion rate on the sales side after aligning its teams.
  
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  Conrad Electronic leveraged its CRM to shed light on pain points and provide more robust service.
  

Create a service-level agreement (SLA)

A service-level agreement (SLA) is an agreement between a business and its customers, but you can also create one between departments. Teams often use an SLA to list a set of deliverables one party has agreed to provide the other. These deliverables can range from qualified leads to a revenue pipeline.
Using an SLA also provides sales and marketing with a tangible means of trust and accountability. A report by LinkedIn found that 87 percent of marketing and sales leaders say alignment between teams enables critical business growth. Down the line, this growth can boost morale and inspire more trust between departments.

Set shared goals

It’s easy to work separately when focused on unique goals, but what about KPIs that sales and marketing both work towards?
Let’s look at lead management and qualifying as an example.
Sales departments do a fair amount of analysis on leads to ensure sales reps are concentrating their efforts on the best prospects, but they can’t cultivate what isn’t there. Marketing departments, therefore, have the shared goal of accruing valuable leads that match the target audience and who are likely to move past the interest phase and into purchasing.
When both teams work together on a shared goal, they can better hit KPIs and streamline progress.