By: Jacob Hanson
As an education marketer, are you married to your sales team? Probably not. The relationship between marketing and sales may be one of the most contentious of all business relationships. But sales is the yin to marketing’s yang, marketing is the peas to sales’ carrots, so it just doesn’t make any sense for the two to be so far apart so often. According to HubSpot, 59% of marketers say they provide salespeople with very high-quality leads, but only 25% of salespeople agree.
Here are a few ways you can change that dynamic and get your marketing and sales teams up to the altar!
- Start dating!
Sales depend on marketing to provide them with qualified leads—not just leads, but truly qualified leads. Do you as a marketer understand what “qualified lead” means to your sales team?
If not, it might be time to get the families together and start the conversation. Consider doing a brainstorming session where you highlight recently closed sales and document those new customers’ journey to saying “yes to the dress.” What actions did they take before they sent the PO? What did the hand-off look like? It’s important to be able to replicate the process so every member of the team understands where they stand and how they contribute to this relationship.
Pro tip: Have some fun! Use games like Kahoot!, a popular game-based assessment platform in ed tech, to get some competitive juices flowing between the teams.
- Feed the relationship with open and honest feedback.
We feed “leads” to sales all the time: educators, administrators, decision-makers, and influencers alike. But are you, education marketing guru, getting any feedback from sales on the quality of those leads? Maybe you get complaints about not-so-hot leads, but are you hearing about the good ones too?
Create open lines of communication between your marketing and sales teams. Allow them to tell you why a lead wasn’t truly qualified. While this isn’t always the best news to hear, it may be the most valuable.
If you are missing a step in qualifying leads, this will help pinpoint what other layers need to be added. You also want to hear the good! See my point above: when the process works, do a quick fist pump and look for ways to replicate or expand on it.
Pro tip: Create a lead communication stream within your CRM to ensure sales can give you feedback on why a lead was or wasn’t truly qualified. Conversely, be sure you communicate back to that rep or the entire team what adjustments you are looking to make to get ahead of this next time.
- Grab sales by the hand and step up to the altar.
If your sales and marketing teams aren’t currently married or, at the very least, in a serious relationship with sales, take it upon yourself to make it happen. We are all paid from the same pot of money, so if we aren’t closing, no one wins. It is up to you to continually engage sales leadership and reps. How can you ensure that the communications between sales and your team aren’t all negative or aren’t all about the numbers? Be sure to tell the story behind those numbers, and ask the same in return from sales.
Pro tip: Try scheduling individual meetings, maybe 15 minutes long, with each rep or manager, on a monthly basis to discuss their activities. You need to learn what they are learning from the educators they are talking with. Choose three to five specific leads you have recently handed over that you know a rep is pursuing and ask questions about how it is going (or not going). Or potentially look into starting a sales and marketing in education PLC within your company!
At the end of the day, divorce is not an option for sales and marketing, nor is it feasible to operate in silos. However, if you take steps to ensure that this relationship is started, nurtured, and meaningful, each of you win—so does your bottom line and your customers. Now it’s time to start ring shopping!
Thanks for sharing!
