Effortlessly bridging marketing-sales divide: Closing the gap

Grow your business by bridging the marketing and sales gap 

Bridging the gap between marketing and sales ensures the right customers are targeted with compelling content and followed up with successful sales strategies. Flowbird Ltd's CRM systems help you achieve this. 

Marketing and sales are often operated as two distinct departments rather than as one ongoing cycle. When this cycle works well, everybody is fully aware of the brand's products and how they're marketed, while valuable sales data helps fine-tune future content. Customers' needs and pain points are fully understood, quality relationships are built, sales increase and profits soar. Follow these six strategies and bridge the gap between your marketing and sales. 

Have one clear leader.

Instead of having two distinct departments within your company, combine them under one clear leader. Someone with the vision to oversee both areas, create strategies and targets, monitor individual and team progress, and set clear objectives for future development.

Have a common goal.

Then, define what success looks like for your brand. Do this by moving away from team members and focusing solely on personal tasks and targets. Instead, create a shared understanding of brand awareness, lead generation and how to convert browsers to customers. Everyone then works together to achieve greater customer engagement, purchasing, and increased brand loyalty.

Communicate

Communication between all team members is a significant key to success. The marketing team needs to know who salespeople are making contact with so that they can create focused and engaging content. Regular meetings for team members at all levels allow insights to be shared and ideas developed. This provides a sound base for bridging the gap between marketing and sales. Consider an open-office design and social events as well. These provide forums for more casual but just as vital communication.

Create a clear buyer persona.

The next step is creating a clear buyer persona. Everybody involved with your product must clearly envision what a 'good lead' looks like. An outline of this persona should include everything about a customer that could influence their buying decision - traits, habits, wishes, pain points and details about their company size and location. Once established, this buyer persona should be regularly reviewed, updated and available to all existing and new team members. 

Promote the right message.

With a clear buyer persona established, marketing content becomes more focused and relevant. All content should be informative, educational, consistent and have a human touch. It should also offer a way of solving the potential customer's problem and keep them engaged through every step of the decision-making and buying process. Get this message right, and fewer, but higher-quality leads will be created. 

Automate the pipeline process.

One way of maintaining consistency among all personnel is by automating your CRM. The right CRM system delivers an overview of the whole pipeline. Leads are tracked from first contact to conversion while metrics are collected, analysed and fed back into the system. This, in turn, creates an automated database that schedules timely and appropriate follow-ups, which are vital to customer loyalty and retention. At  Flowbird Ltd, we have the tools and technology that allow you to bridge the gap between marketing and sales effectively.