By Marina Sala, on 15 December 2022
Coordinating your marketing and sales departments is one of the best ways to improve the health of your company. That's why smarketing has emerged, a philosophy that helps you align and empower your entire team. Today we are going to see what this concept consists of and what are the keys to successfully implement it.
What Is Smarketing and What Are Its Origins?
The term "smarketing" refers to combining the sales and marketing processes of a business. In a nutshell, it is a methodology that helps marketing and sales professionals work in a more aligned, effective way to achieve online leads and sales.
With smarketing, instead of having two teams working separately, marketing and sales are part of the same process and become an integrated entity that shares the same objectives.
Smarketing tries to solve a recurring issue, since when marketing and sales are not well coordinated, it is possible that there is no agreement on what constitutes a lead, what actions should be taken when leads come in, and when they should be passed from one team to another.
With smarketing, both teams are aligned and resources aren’t wasted on inefficient processes and misunderstandings. All this results in better leads and more conversions.
How to Apply Smarketing
There are three key principles that can help you get started with smarketing in your company:
Communication: in smarketing, the marketing and sales teams work as one. Therefore, the first step is to break down communication silos, promote constant interaction between the two departments, and share the same communication channels.
Integration: to promote coordination, the marketing and sales teams should share the same software and processes. For example, implementing a CRM across the company can help enormously in managing contacts and information.
Motivation: in the end, smarketing is nothing more than a change in the company's culture and as such, it requires motivating the team and making them understand the why behind this. Therefore, it is important to organize regular meetings where achievements are celebrated, the process is evaluated, and all new developments are shared.
Why Should You Apply Smarketing at Your Company?
Smarketing is a great strategy to optimize resources, as it helps minimize the classic conflicts between marketing and sales departments and encourages them to work together to get more conversions.
According to several studies conducted by HubSpot, the more the marketing and sales departments are aligned, the more the perception of the marketing and sales strategy improves. 81% of professionals on teams with a perfectly aligned marketing and sales strategy said their marketing strategy was effective!