It’s no secret in real estate that marketing and sales teams don’t always get along. When sales are slow they tend to play the blame game. Sales teams blame marketing teams for a lack of lead and marketing teams blame sales teams for not closing their leads.
The Harvard Business Review conducted a recent survey of sales and marketing executives and found that, of the terms they used to describe each other, 87% were overwhelmingly negative. Sales execs used words like “paper-pusher” and “irrelevant” and marketing execs called sales people “cowboys” and described them as “incompetent.”
With all that name-calling, aligning your sales and marketing might seem hopeless, but making it happen will translate into success for your development. A 2010 study from the Aberdeen Group found that companies with a strong alignment between sales and marketing achieved 20% annual revenue growth, and a 4% decline in revenue growth in companies with poor alignment.
So, how do you turn these rivals into partners? Here at N5R we suggest keeping it simple. We’ve put together 3 simple rules to follow that will remove the divide between your sales and marketing teams.
- Define Your Terms
If your teams can’t agree on what makes a lead a lead or a prospect a prospect, they’ll never be able to work together effectively. This might seem simple, but a study by MarketingSherpa found that only 45% of companies had a company-wide definition of a sales-ready lead. Define your terms from the get go and take away any of the confusion. To give you an idea of what we mean, here are N5R’s definitions of a prospect, a lead and a qualified lead.
Prospect – A prospect needs further marketing efforts to determine if they are potential customers. They might not be fully acquainted with your organization, but you’ve got their name or their email address.
Lead – A lead has given you a lot more information than a prospect and they’ve already jumped over any of your entry barriers. They’ve filled out a form and shown interest in your development.
Qualified Leads – A qualified lead is closer to making a purchase than a lead or prospect. You already have their information and your marketing department has used lead nurturing techniques to determine if they’re ready for a sale.
Use these as a starting point and refine the definitions to fit your development’s needs. Remember, if your teams are working with different definitions, they're ultimately aiming for different goals.
- Make a Service-Level Agreement
Each of your development’s teams need to know what they can expect from each other if they ever hope to get along. An SLA will act as a guideline for each team’s expectations and keep everyone on the same page. It should define the quality and quantity of the leads marketing will deliver to sales. On the other side of things, the SLA should define exactly what steps your sales team is going to follow to close those leads.
Knowing how many qualified leads the sales team needs to meet their quota will help marketers understand the sales process. In the same way, setting targets for the number of qualified leads that will be delivered every month helps the sales team manage their expectations.
- Talk To Each Other
This is another seemingly obvious one, but the biggest problems between sales and marketing teams arise when one team doesn’t know what the other is doing. Your teams need to respect and understand each other in order to work well together. Make sure they’re meeting on a regular basis—formally and informally. Sales and marketing are always going to have different ideas about how to do things, but if the communications between them remains strong, those different ideas can strengthen your organization rather than tear it apart.
If you follow these rules your teams are sure to better understand each other and that’s when the magic happens. The sooner you get your sales and marketing teams working together towards a common goal, the sooner your sales will skyrocket.
If you want to learn more sales and marketing strategies and benefit from training that will allow your condo project to Develop, Grow and Succeed in Any Economy, apply to our exclusive one-day Condo Mastery seminar. Watch the video below tohear about Condo Mastery directly from world-renowned condo and sales and marketing expert, Roman Bodnarchuk, and click APPLY NOW to learn if you qualify.
