Sales and marketing teams can be like the Lennon and McCartney of your business.
When there is a healthy tension between them, magic happens. If they go in different directions, you can choose a best-forgotten solo Beatles album from the seventies to supply the analogue of what happens. How do you get your sales and marketing team synchronised?
Here are some ideas.
1. Personal brand and selling
Especially on LinkedIn, people buy from people. I did some desktop research to find actual stats on this, and I couldn’t find many proper sample-sized surveys. What I did find suggests what our experience is with our clients: personal posts attract around 2-3x the amount of impressions, reactions, and comments that similar posts from the company account.
LinkedIn is built this way, with a company account significantly restricted in what it can do compared to a personal account: it can’t provide personal messages and is mainly reliant on individual accounts for growth.
Recently, we discussed Founder-led marketing. However, that is only part of the puzzle. A B2B content strategy requires your sales teams to focus on building their networks, sharing the content, and using it for direct selling. If this isn’t happening, investigate why. Perhaps the sales team needs training. Could your marketing team assist them with enhanced data and martech to facilitate direct content with clients? Are they not confident in writing their posts? Do they not feel they have the time?
2. Embrace personalised, automated content nurturing.
I was in sales for a lot of my career, and I am not immune to some of the thinking I had to overcome once I could see the power of marketing-enhanced pipelines. For example, I used to think that only I was the right person to nurture my prospects with content (instead of trusting personalisation and automation).
That’s until I understood that I wasn’t talking to enough prospects and that marketing (when it’s good marketing) was giving this more extensive potential client base consistency and responsiveness. This gave them information that helped them move quickly along the decision-making process. Through lead scoring, we knew when they were ready, transforming a good target into an easy sell.
3. The direct approach
If you don’t ask, you don’t get. I often see businesses nervous about more direct marketing or selling methods. They’re more comfortable with the indirect approach, which includes thought leadership, brand marketing, and company culture. These elements are essential, by the way. But they won’t help you as much with revenue and leads if you don’t have direct approaches in your mix.
What do I mean by a direct approach? I mean cold outreach or direct messages via LinkedIn and email; ICP (ideal customer profiles) lists built into LinkedIn sales navigator or in a spreadsheet involving people you’ve yet to speak to. These are all activities that your sales and marketing teams should be working on together.
A client recently told me he replied to a cold email, but that was the first time. He’d had all these other useless ones. I asked him what it was about the one he replied to, and he said, “It was relevant to my needs and where I am at right now.” Although he began the story with the idea that email marketing doesn’t work, he realised it had worked.
Remember, you are not for everyone; everyone is not for you. Don’t worry about accidentally emailing someone who is not into your services. Worry about the missed opportunity of being absent when someone is ready or interested. That’s possible when sales and marketing align with a shared mission.
Getting your sales and marketing teams synched up doesn’t happen overnight, but small, deliberate steps can create significant shifts.
Into action
Get your sales and marketing teams in alignment.
Getting your sales and marketing teams synched up doesn’t happen overnight, but small, deliberate steps can create significant shifts. Here’s how to put these recommendations into practice today:
1. Empower Your Sales Team on LinkedIn:
- Organise a training session for your sales team on building their personal brand on LinkedIn. Share simple tips, such as connecting with prospects, sharing company content, and writing authentic posts.
- Create a library of ready-to-use LinkedIn post templates or talking points to help your team confidently share relevant content without feeling overwhelmed.
2. Build a Nurturing Workflow:
- Map your buyer journey and identify where prospects drop off. Then, use this information to implement a personalised nurturing strategy supported by automation tools like HubSpot, ActiveCampaign, or similar platforms.
- Set up lead scoring to track when prospects are ready for outreach. Ensure sales and marketing collaborate to fine-tune messaging at each stage.
3. Perfect Your Direct Outreach:
- Define your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and build a list of prospects using tools like LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Cross-check this with input from your sales team to ensure accuracy.
- Develop a cold outreach playbook with email and LinkedIn message templates tailored to your audience’s needs. Test different approaches to see what resonates, and iterate as you gather feedback.
Host a workshop or joint meeting between sales and marketing to align goals and agree on priorities. For example, set a shared objective, such as generating 50 high-quality leads per month, and outline how both teams will contribute.
4. Create a Shared Mission:
- Host a workshop or joint meeting between sales and marketing to align goals and agree on priorities. For example, set a shared objective, such as generating 50 high-quality leads per month, and outline how both teams will contribute.
5. Start Small, Then Scale:
- Focus on just one area this month—LinkedIn engagement, personalised nurturing, or direct outreach. Test, learn, and refine before rolling it out across your teams.
Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Start today by choosing one area where your sales and marketing teams can collaborate better and take the first step toward a unified strategy. The benefits of alignment are better leads, shorter sales cycles, stronger relationships and worth the effort.
We can help
Aligning your sales and marketing teams can feel overwhelming, especially when resources are stretched thin. That’s where we come in. Europa Creative Partners specialises in helping businesses like yours bridge the gap between sales and marketing, creating strategies and execution that drive real results.
Whether building LinkedIn confidence for your sales team, setting up personalised automated nurturing workflows, or workshops, we have the expertise to make it happen.
Ready to take the first step? Contact us today for a no-obligation chat about your goals. Let’s explore how we can help you align your teams and grow your business.