The Importance Of Aligning Marketing And Sales For Success

Darren Westall March 10, 2021 Recruitment

Take a look at your current department structure. Depending on the size of your recruitment company, you’ll likely have the basics such as admin, finance, IT marketing and sales. If you’re a bigger organisation, you’ll probably have a lot more teams and departments, split into niche areas.

Now have a think about how these teams work together – or if they do at all. Do your inhouse teams communicate with one another, or do you have the classic each-team-is-an-island situation?

We aren’t saying that all teams need to know exactly what everyone in the business is doing. (That’s too much for anyone, and quite frankly, it’s almost impossible.) What we’re saying is that for a business to run as smoothly as possible and achieve the most success, some teams need to work in unison with one another.

Enter: marketing and sales

Marketing and sales collaboration

Businesses with completely separate marketing and sales teams, that function without knowing what the other is doing, are putting themselves at a huge disadvantage. Firstly, look at the purpose of both teams; one is to close sales and bring in more return for the business, and the other is to market your company in order to increase brand awareness and bring in more leads. And what follows on from leads?

You’ve got it. Sales.

Although the day-to-day tasks of each team differ completely, one without the other would mean the business overall is lacking. Despite salespeople and recruiters being able to spin many plates at once – one of which, occasionally, is marketing and building their personal brand – working with the marketing team makes their lives a lot easier.

The best part is, this is a two-way street. The sales team can also make a marketer’s life a lot easier, too. Your marketing team needs to be aware of key roles, locations, industries and topics that your recruiters need help with in order for marketing material to be useful. Creating general marketing content for the overall business, or splitting it into sectors or locations, is a great start. But the key to creating marketing content is to make it as specific as possible.

And who can help with the specifics?

The sales team.

Where to begin?

If your marketing and sales teams are already in unison – great! But if not, there are a few key points to kickstart the most successful business duo of all time.

1. Organise fortnightly or monthly meetings

We know – the last thing anyone needs is more meetings in their calendar. However, regular meetings between your recruiters and the marketing team should definitely be on the priority list. They don’t need to be long winded, and they definitely don’t need to be every week – fortnightly or monthly will do. Keep the key points strictly within your timeframe, and make sure the sales team prepares beforehand. Ask the recruiters which key roles/sectors/locations they are working on for the next couple of weeks, and the marketing team can then suggest content and campaign ideas.

2. Create a discussion space

Emails, phone calls, LinkedIn posts – trying to keep up with what everyone’s doing can be a tiresome task. It’s likely that in between meetings, the marketing team will have a few questions for the sales staff or vice versa. The best way of handling questions and answers (and also giving access to other people, so they don’t double up on the same questions) is to create a discussion space for everyone involved. Try a messaging platform such as Slack to keep it all in one place.

3. Monitor and analyse the results

One vital part of aligning marketing and sales is for both teams to be aware of the results of each campaign or piece of content. Without knowing what does and doesn’t work, you won’t know what is best to try again in the future, and what should be put in the backlog. For example, if you use a particular type of format for job ads on LinkedIn, such as a video of a recruiter quickly saying what they’re looking for, you’ll be able to see how much traction it gets. If it works, it’s worth using this same format again in the future – if it doesn’t get much engagement after two or three attempts, this might be worth rethinking.