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Thursday, April 28, 2016

Integrate Sales and Marketing Teams for the Best Results

In order to reap the substantial rewards available in the marketing space, sales and marketing teams need to work together. Integration between all departments is important, but when the ultimate goal of marketing is converting leads and sales teams are using marketing material, companies will get better returns. A survey from sales performance management software provider CallidusCloud examines developments in integration during 2015.

Indeed, integration is key to ensuring profits. Companies that don’t align departments well can see revenue drops of 7 percent, while highly aligned organizations can see revenue growth of 32 percent. Other studies cited indicate that three-year growth in revenue and profit can happen 24 percent and 27 percent faster, respectively.

However, very few of the marketing and sales professionals surveyed believed their departments were well aligned. 56 percent believed their teams were somewhat aligned, while 19 percent said they were somewhat misaligned and 9 percent believed they were misaligned.

A large part of this divide may come down to the technology in use. 31 percent are using an integrated sales and marketing solution, but 40 percent are using stand-alone applications for each team. 11.9 percent are manually operating using spreadsheets, which is a sure-fire way to slow down integration. With a cohesive technological solution, departments should be able to work a lot closer with one another.

Sales and marketing departments are starting to realize the benefits of rolling out technological solutions. Almost 40 percent responded that their technology has been adopted by all team members, and a further 36 percent responded that more than one-half of their team is on board with their solution.

Despite advances in social media marketing, many sales and marketing professions still seem wary of it as a tactic. Only 24 percent report that social media has changed their processes significantly, while 36 percent said it changed their process slightly. This may be because generally it seems that professionals have a difficult time measuring a return on their investment when it comes to social. The report also indicates that professionals also have difficulty gaining value from data collection.

For more information, view the report here.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.



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