One of the most important traits for your marketing team to possess is an affinity for collaboration. Simply put, marketing teams work best when they are attentive and communicative with other departments, ranging from product development to customer service to sales. It’s through careful collaboration that marketing team members can ensure they are promoting the brand precisely and effectively, ultimately helping these other departments to succeed.
But cross-department collaboration is easier said than done, especially in an era where remote and hybrid work environments encourage siloing. Here are a few tips for more fruitful collaboration between marketing and other teams.
Coordinate with the Sales Team
It’s incredibly important for marketing and sales to work hand-in-hand. After all, marketers create the content that draws in leads, and sales reps then close the deal. For this division of labor to work fluidly and efficiently, everyone needs to be on the same page.
For marketers, then, it’s helpful to know what the sales team does each day, and what processes and strategies they use when interacting with customers. Having each marketing team member shadow someone for sales, if only for a day, can be incredibly beneficial. If that’s not feasible, some other options include listening to recordings from previous sales calls; sitting in on virtual sales department meetings; or even just assessing the sales department’s workflows.
Focus on Sales Enablement
It’s also important for marketers to remember that, at the end of the day, their top priority is enabling the sales team, making it easier for them to close deals and onboard new customers or clients.
There are a few practical ways in which this can happen:
- Marketers can request that their counterparts in the sales division provide them with frequently asked customer questions. These real-life FAQs can be invaluable when crafting educational content that boosts consumer confidence, and primes customers to keep moving down the sales funnel.
- Marketers can also work with sales to pinpoint the moment in the sales process where customers are most likely to fall off, then to brainstorm solutions. For example, does sales tend to lose customers when pricing comes up? It may be wise to develop content addressing this, perhaps by emphasizing the cost- or time-saving potential of the product in question.
Check in with Customer Service
In addition to the sales team, your customer service division plays an important part in frontline customer interactions. It’s important to check in with them from time to time, and specifically to inquire about complaint/success patterns. Complaints are just what you’d think: Areas where customers think the company could improve its efforts. And successes are those areas where customers express their pleasure or approval, commending the company for its good labors.
What does any of this have to do with marketing? Well, often, complaints come down to messaging and expectations. For example, if a customer complains about a confusing website experience, the answer may be to provide clearer verbiage on the landing page, or to be more succinct in your messaging. That’s something marketing can help with!
Engaging with Product Development
It’s also important for marketers to have a seat at the table in product development meetings. The reason for this is simple: As a new product is being developed, marketers need to begin brainstorming ways to present that product to consumers. And that means having a clear understanding of the product’s features and amenities (as well as its limitations).
At the same time, marketing can sometimes offer valuable pushback, noting when a particular feature or amenity might be difficult to sell. In other words, marketing team members can help the product development team stay on track with actual customer pain points and concerns.
Use Product Roadmap Software
One way to unite all these disparate departments is with the use of product roadmap software, which keeps everyone on the same page with regard to timelines, product specifications, and more.
Gocious is one of the leading names in product roadmap software solutions, and it’s especially notable for its inclusion of marketing features.
With Gocious, marketing team members can stay in sync with sales, customer service, product development, and company leadership. Specifically, Gocious allows marketers to:
- Score and rank the product against the things target customers emphasize.
- Stay aligned with product definitions, features, and benefits, all of which are essential when drafting marketing collateral.
- Compare product lineups with competitor products.
Work in Tandem with Cross-Disciplinary Teams
The most effective marketing teams are communicative and collaborative with other departments, reveling in a give-and-take with sales, customer service, and beyond. That often means using the best software solutions, as well as the most nimble and adaptive vendors.
Questions about creating marketing messaging that harmonizes with other departments? Reach out to Grammar Chic, Inc. at www.grammarchic.net, or 803-831-7444.
The Red Ink 