What is smarketing: find out how to align marketing and sales

Smarketing is a word formed by "sales + marketing". It is a method in which the sales team and the marketing team must join forces to configure the lead generation strategy. Thus, both departments work together and become the same instrument to achieve the same objectives. The main advantage of this strategy is that it seeks to minimise possible conflicts of interest between both departments and multiply the efforts in what is really important: achieving the company's objectives.

Normally, the marketing team has the task of attracting customers and offering them the product they need, while the sales team is responsible for ensuring that the commercial agreement is successfully concluded. Therefore, if both teams are not fully aligned, this could lead to a significant loss of resources in the resolution of misunderstandings and process failures. This is where the real objective of smarketing comes into play: to minimise conflicts and guarantee the quality of the leads.

what is smarketing?

The most common problem between sales and marketing is none other than integration and communication, so these are the aspects that both departments will have to work on in order to achieve a good collaboration. Although, obviously, you also need to be highly motivated.

• Communication: this is the first step towards integration and consists of promoting interaction between both departments so that lead generation is aligned with each of their objectives. For example, so that the management of a sales department does not interfere with the marketing department's SEO campaigns, there needs to be communication between the members of both teams.
• Integration: once interaction between the two departments starts to occur, it is important to unify the tasks of both departments. For example, using a common software can be an ideal solution in terms of time and costs, as it facilitates the management of information. This integration can be achieved through constant meetings between both teams and participation in evaluative meetings.
• Motivation: this whole process would not be carried out in the same way without a motivational role: having weekly meetings between sales and marketing teams to celebrate team efforts, regularly sharing new product features and tracking the monthly progress of each department can strengthen the bond between the two departments and thus achieve better working mechanics.

what are the main advantages of smarketing?

1. A good linkage, cooperation and communication between the marketing and sales departments results in better reception of campaigns and positive revenues for the company.
2. Inclusion of decisions in the strategies of the sales department. The marketing department works much more on the creative side in their advertising campaigns, so it would give a great boost of creativity and originality within the sales process .
3. it increases the ROI of both departments, sales and marketing, achieves business objectives faster and improves the cohesion of the team and the company environment.

how to implement a smarketing strategy?

The process of implementing a smarketing strategy takes time. Keep in mind that you are essentially changing the way your company interacts with potential customers, which means that with smarketing may come changes in the revenue stream as well. For this reason, you should not take the change lightly and follow these steps:

1. Create an aligned terminology - maintaining daily communication between sales and marketing is essential for successful smarketing. Beyond clarifying key terms such as "lead" and "potential customer", sales and marketing teams must also work together to identify their ideal customer profile.
2. Define a service level agreement- this is a contract that sets out what the smarketing process should look like. To be truly effective, it does not need to be finalised before integration, but it is best to set it out, define the objective to be achieved, start implementation, and ensure that this agreement remains flexible to adapt to changes as they occur.
3. Share the same funnel. When sales and marketing share the same funnel, they can easily ensure that prospects are treated with consistent messages and tone throughout the funnel. In the smarketing funnel, marketing is responsible for the top of the funnel, while sales is responsible for the bottom. The middle of the funnel is the responsibility of both departments.
4. Establish closed-loop reporting between sales and marketing. Both sales and marketing should have visibility of each other's actions, goals and progress. The sales team should be encouraged to provide feedback on the quality of leads each month.
5. Integrate sales and marketing software for data alignment. For seamless alignment, sales and marketing software must be fully integrated. When the systems that sales and marketing use can "talk" to each other, data is automatically synchronised between them. By integrating the software, all teams have a complete picture of the buyer lifecycle.

It is important to be clear that it takes a lot of trial and error, process writing and tool testing to integrate sales and marketing properly, but, in the end, the benefits of smarketing are obvious.