Is Marketing Responsible for Sales? Learn How to Optimize the Funnel

The answer to this ultimate question of “is marketing responsible for sales” is not as straightforward as a yes or no. There are a number of sales and marketing differences. However, they are also linked and support one another very closely. There is a delicate relationship between them that can either make or break a company’s success.

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The more you understand the relationship, the better you can support it and optimize both teams. Keep reading to learn how and if marketing is responsible for sales!

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Is marketing responsible for sales?

Yes and no. In order to fully understand the relationship, it’s a good idea to understand their functions.

Marketing focuses on creating awareness and building a brand’s reputation. They focus on the overall sale of the company, as well as understanding the customer’s needs.

The marketing department creates compelling messages and positions the product/service in the marketplace to generate leads for the sales team to contact.

Sales converts those leads into actual customers. They interact directly with prospects and tend to their concerns. Their goal is to close the deal eventually.

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What the sales and marketing differences are

Sales is all about interacting with the clients. Every call, email, research, and lead follow-up ties back to the bottom line. Sales people interact with potential customers at all hours of the day, and it’s a busy, engaging, hands-on environment.

Marketing is taking three steps back from the client. They look to the future to see how they can generate new leads for next week, next month, and next quarter. They look at strategies for retaining customers and creating awareness for new customers. A customer’s journey will start with one of the marketing teams’ strategies.

This can be the awareness from social media, a blog postor a good review of the company. With guidance from the marketing department, the customer will, at some point, submit their details or contact the company.

This is where sales jump in. They will then bring the customer on board and complete the deal. Afterward, the customer is in the marketing pipeline with a loyalty program. They follow up to do a review or get them on the newsletter so they can continue suggesting new pitches to them.

Both teams work towards the common goal of driving revenue and growing the bottom line, but in two different methods.

The challenges between sales and marketing

Because the two departments are working in the same space but from different angles, there might be some overlapping conflict between them.

• Too close and too different: The sales team often feels like marketing is out of touch with reality, as they don’t interact with the customer directly like they do. Marketing feels like sales is too close to the bottom line, that they don’t see the bigger picture.
• Price negotiating: There are often challenges with the price as well. Sales want to lower it so that getting the client on board is easier. Marketing wants it higher to cover costs and what is best for the business, and they look at what type of customer they want to attract.
• Tone: Sales often consider the tone of marketing materials incorrect for their clients on the phone. The material might not stress urgency enough, which aligns better with their drive for revenue. Or they might want it more actionable, whereas marketing would be more focused on telling the brand’s story.

How to deal with the challenges between marketing and sales

Opening up the conversation between the two terms will immediately have a positive effect. Once there is a realization that working together will meet everyone’s objective, there will be an understanding between them and less rivalry.

Align sales and marketing operations so that there is less distinction between the teams. Integrate their experiences so that they can see and learn from one another and understand how they each operate.

A few great ways to let each team understand what is happening on the other side is to:

• Get marketing on the phone: Let members of marketing listen in on a sales pitch as part of ongoing training annually or bi-annually. This will allow marketing to get insight into the customers and how they respond to the marketing material directly.
• Let sales in on meetings: Ask members of the sales team to sit in on meetings when the overall strategy of the company is being finalized. They will get a broader understanding of how the company is trying to reach new audiences and who they are targeting.

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Ways marketing can support sales

Now that we understand the relationship between the two marketing and sales, let’s look at how they can support one another. Starting off with how marketing teams can support sales by:

Generating more leads

Nothing makes sales happier than leads! Marketing can look at increasing their lead generation by focusing on higher-quality content. Some ideas for this are to

• Capture information in calls to action (CTA) to e-books, webinars, and other downloadable content
• Optimize increase landing pages
• Include a lead scoring system to separate low and higher-value leads.

Warm up the leads

A potential customer leaves details and then goes about their day. A little while later, they get hit with a sales call. This might surprise the customer as, by that stage, it’s all a little out of context. But if the marketing team has nurtured that potential customer with personalization, campaigns, or even an email notification about their services and what the next steps are, the customer will be ready for the call and want to get onboard before the sales member has even said hi.

Get insights about the competitors

Part of a good marketing strategy is to do a competitor analysis. This gives a company insight into how they can outperform their competition. Imagine if your sales team also had access to this information.

They would be able to hone in on your company’s advantages and use your company’s strengths to counter your competitor’s weaknesses.

More lead information

The basic information would be contact information, a name and a company, plus a title. But a sales team would be unstoppable if they had access to more information, such as demographics, lifestyle, and maybe even interests.

They would be able to talk about topics to make the lead feel comfortable and relate better to who they were talking to. You might not want to buy from a sales rep, but if you had a connection, you would be more inclined.

How sales can support marketing

There is a lot of focus on how marketing can support sales, but did you know that sales can also support marketing? Sales reps gather so much information when working with clients that it would be hugely beneficial to a marketing team. Insights such as:

Feedback information

A sales rep gets the full run-down from clients firsthand on whether they like the product or the service. The client often makes suggestions on how to make it work better for them or adds features that they need.

Sales teams can rely on information from the marketing team about what aspects of the company they should use as selling points and what is important to the client.

Insight into the customer’s journey

The funnel is usually something along the lines of a lead becoming a prospect, then an opportunity, and finally, a customer. But is that really the journey of your customers?

A sales rep might work with a client more than that. Patterns could emerge in the journey, showing areas that the marketing team could improve. There might be misinformation or confusion in an area that could be cleared up.

Optimize the funnel for marketing and sales

Once teams work together, you can identify bottlenecks in customers’ journeys. For example, the sales team finds that clients generally don’t close because of a pricing issue, but marketing doesn’t want to lower the price.

By working together, other options can come into play, like developing a loyalty program or other incentives the sales team can offer to justify the price.

Integrating a customer relationship management (CRM) platform and marketing automation toolsso that everyone has access to the same data will allow sales teams to know the customer better before they make contact, and the marketing team will gain insight into the customer’s journey.

What other ways can I encourage teamwork?

At WebFX, we incorporate the POSITIVE code with our team to encourage good teamwork and personal best. Part of our code is also to put ourselves in our client’s shoes to measure how much we can WOW them.

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