You need to stop thinking of your Saas sales team & marketing team as separate entities and starting thinking about synergy! Both departments are working towards the same end goal; Revenue!
If you are a new reader of this blog (You are very welcome!) we encourage you to go back to Part I of this series where we discuss key strategic planning to be considered throughout the sales hiring process. Perhaps you’re further along in your development, you’ve hired that perfect Saas Sales team and you’re already the question what’s next? If that sounds like you continue reading where we discuss creating synergy amongst departments while achieving growth!
So far we have only discussed the hiring process in relation to sales teams. In reality, much of what we have discussed regarding strategic planning, candidate profiles, consequences of bad hires, etc. is directly applicable to any department of an organisation. While Sales & Marketing teams serve two distinct functions they are also working towards a shared end goal; revenue & growth. Finding synergy amongst your sales & marketing teams early on is a sure-fire way to turning your company into a well-oiled machine…
Onboarding Team Culture
Strong employee morale is a cornerstone of any successful business but building these relationships won’t just happen overnight, it takes time and effort.
Through building excellent candidate profiles and hiring accordingly, you can be sure that new hires fit your company’s values, however, there is still more you can do in preparation for your new starter’s onboarding;
Regular cross-department team meet-ups are an excellent way of initiating new employees. Perhaps, regular bi-weekly meetups could be a way of brainstorming ideas across departments, tutorial sessions getting new employees up to speed on commonly used software. Social events are also critical to maintaining employee morale.
Getting a new hire’s onboarding experience right from the get-go will go a long way to creating a creative, welcoming & innovative work environment.
Alignment of team goals & objectives
Creating successful sales and marketing teams requires both teams to be on the same page regarding who your prospects are, what they care about, how you frame your messages and the objectives your team is working towards.
As a result, your sales and marketing teams can communicate more effectively. During the sales process, marketing can use customer challenges to inform their content and better qualify leads, while sales can refine their messaging over time using the materials that marketing produces. When teams are aligned, they can communicate more effectively about the challenges they face.
Using Your Tech Stack to Align Sales & Marketing
Three elements contribute to the success of a campaign: product, message, and audience. A marketing and sales team must be absolutely on the same page about these elements in order to succeed. Thankfully, today we have access to a wide array of technology, which when properly applied can greatly streamline an organisation’s processes – freeing up precious time for more important tasks.
Common applications you can expect be to integrated between sales & marketing teams include:
Collaboration Tool: Collaboration tools can come in all shapes and sizes. In their most basic sense, they allow for easy communication of ideas and the transfer of data. Social media and messaging apps such as Whatsapp are common, however for the utmost control a dedicated software is the best choice: Asana & Evernote both have their perks, however, for our pick here at Ingenio we recommend Trello. Trello is fully featured and easily accessible. The use of a collaboration tool such as Trello can help align not just your sales and marketing your entire organisation!
Customer Relationship Management (CRM): CRM software can often be very in-depth, perhaps intimidating to the uninitiated. All CRMs will share some features & functionality. Expect to see CRM integration in; Lead management and sales, Marketing, E-Commerce, Call Centre, Reports/Dashboards & Workflows.
Although CRMs share common features and functions it would be impossible to recommend a catch-all CRM for you and your business. The perfect CRM will be organisation dependant, while doing your research here are some questions you should be asking;
1. What areas of our business are the processes inefficient, and what do we hope to improve with CRM?
2. Is there any operational process or workflow that we lack and should add?
3. Who in our company is going to use CRM? How many users do we need?
4. Can we integrate any other software with our CRM system?
5. How much do we have to spend?
At Ingenio, we are committed to creating valuable content about SaaS hiring processes, such as the best strategies to recruit, select and train best sales employees, fill out the form below, join our SaaS Hiring Community and receive exclusive access today! If you want to reach out for a chat, don’t be shy reach out and Find Hiring Solutions for your business today!
Written by James Coffey
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