Best practice in business

Sales and marketing strategies play an essential role in the success of your business by helping you reach more customers and sell more products or services. You should closely align your sales and marketing efforts to enable you to achieve best practice in your business, improve lead generation and drive your revenue.

Benefits of aligning sales and marketing

Businesses where sales and marketing efforts are closely coordinated typically achieve:

• higher customer retention rates
• higher sales win rates
• increased revenue growth
• faster growth
• faster profit growth

Sales and marketing alignment also shortens the sales cycle and links return on investment directly to marketing materials.

Key elements of sales and marketing business best practice

Technology has changed buying behaviour in recent times, so sales no longer have full autonomy over the buying process. Marketing has an increasing role to play, as it offers a critical link to understanding the buyer.

You should coordinate your sales and marketing to gather a clear picture of your target buyer and the different steps in their buying process. You should align sales and marketing in areas of:

• revenue process
• corporate messaging (eg for sales pitches)
• content strategy for marketing and sales
• lead follow up or handoff process
• service level agreements, if necessary
• regular communications

Best practices for unifying your sales and marketing teams are nowadays underpinned by the use of technology, specifically digital marketing. You should consider harnessing the power of the internet, social media, email and mobile technology to reach your audience.

Digital marketing

Digital marketing offers even the smallest business an affordable way to target customers. Tactics can include websites, social media, pay per click advertising, search engine optimisation and email marketing.

Some of the benefits of digital marketing include:

• cost-effectiveness - it is often much cheaper than traditional marketing
• measurable results - help to make improvements, as well as reveal the return on investment
• new markets - online channels can open your business to a global market
• personalisation - messages can be targeted and unique to individuals and groups of customers

As with all best practice, it is important to plan your digital marketing carefully. You must also comply with any legislation that applies to electronic business communications or online transactions.