The Partnership Between Sales and Marketing
The relationship between sales and marketing is key in order to give your customers a positive experience. Often, these two departments work individually, but collaboration between your sales and marketing teams will provide a better overall experience for your customers.
To help us better understand this often-overlooked relationship, we talked to Matt Paige, VP of Marketing & Strategy at HatchWorks, an award-winning firm that specializes in software development and cloud application services.
Matt’s Journey
Matt didn’t start out in marketing. Rather, he made his way into the field in a roundabout way, one that has made a difference in the way he views the relationship between marketing and sales. His journey started in product development and moved through customer relations before it settled into marketing and strategy.
Why did this help Matt? “To be able to market and sell, you have to put yourself in the shoes of your customer.” The bottom line is to focus on the customer’s pain point. His knowledge of product development and customer relations has helped him do that, which, in turn, has enhanced his ability to find qualified leads and generate appropriate marketing for HatchWorks’ sales team.
How Do You Create Alignment With Your Sales Team?
According to 6’8” Matt, just like when he plays basketball, “You have to be a team player. You have to work together, and you have to develop a relationship—sales to marketing and marketing to sales.
Matt admits that he didn’t start working along with a sales team until later. But, once he started seeing what it takes to be great at sales, he realized it’s not for the faint of heart. Now he looks at the relationship as a collaboration.
Because it’s hard for marketers to get in front of customers, sales is marketing’s secret weapon. To understand this pain point, you must interact with your sales force and get feedback from customers. This helps everyone in the long run.
When you partner marketing with sales, you work together to discover what your common purposes and goals are. You turn pain points into a marketing product. As Matt says, “If you don’t work with your sales team, you miss out on a lot of opportunities.”
The Handoff From Marketing to Sales
As far as strategy goes, when generating leads, Matt’s marketing team likes to provide the sales team with as much insight as they can so they don’t send sales non-quality leads. He says, “We set up the pins so sales can knock them down.”
It’s all about feedback loops. That’s why HatchWorks’ marketing and sales have bi-weekly meetings so the sales folks can continue to give them good nuggets of information coming from customers.
Breaking Through the Noise
Matt agrees that breaking through the “noise” on platforms like LinkedIn can be difficult. He takes an 80/20 approach to build a brand on LinkedIn. He believes in offering readers 80% value content (which may include a story about a new puppy) and 20% sales content. He tells his daughter, “You attract more bees with honey.”
If you offer potential customers value, let them get to know you, and build a connection, customers often find a way to come to you. “People buy from people,” he says, “People don’t buy from brands.”
Working With CRM
“To be honest, working with CRM is a challenge for us,” Matt admits. He says they’ve had to get back to basics, simplify, and get their lists clean. He thinks that CRM needs to support a company’s strategy so it’s easy to use and enhances the collaboration between sales and marketing.
For more on Matt and how HatchWorks’ marketing and sales collaborate, listen to his interview on the Sales Lead Dogpodcast.
