The Benefits of Aligning sales and marketing

Misaligned teams have trouble coordinating, operate with separate information, and miss goals and benchmarks because their metrics and data are different. Separate solutions put both teams at a disadvantage because each team only sees part of the picture. This leads to missed opportunities, miscommunications, and ineffective strategies, all of which negatively affect customer reach.

Many of the challenges that make it difficult for sales and marketing teams to work together are the result of siloed processes and systems that prevent each team from successfully responding to what the other team is working on. Some of the signs that disconnected processes are holding your sales and marketing teams back include:

Poor Lead Quality
It’s difficult for sales teams to score leads with an incomplete view of how the lead was acquired, or how the lead has responded so far.

Limited Visibility into Sales Conversions
Marketing teams can’t modify, replicate, or adapt strategies without knowing which of the generated leads resulted in sales.

Inconsistent Definitions 
Sales and marketing teams with separate processes struggle to work together when their definitions differ.

Incomplete Views of the Sales Process from Start to Finish
When marketing can only see the beginning of the sales process, and sales can only see the end, collaboration to improve the
process is a challenge.

Conflicting or Misaligned Performance Objectives
Key performance indicators (KPI) aren’t as useful if they’re based on different data sets.

Degree of Control over the Brand
Separated processes and technologies make it difficult to keep branding consistent during customer interactions.

These challenges limit the effectiveness and achievement potential of both teams. 

The solution lies in removing data silos and bringing sales and marketing together on one integrated platform like Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales & Marketing which  can help:

• Securely manage and share a single source of information about contacts, leads, and customers to
  understand how every interaction impacts results.
• Target the right audience using list segmentation.
• Prioritise leads who are ready to buy across different customer segments with multiple lead-scoring models.
• Connect and automate marketing and sales processes, from nurture to close, and track the progress of every lead in a shared database.
• Make collaboration and communications with colleagues, leads, and customers easy and consistent with your brand
  using integrated Microsoft Office 365 tools.
• Simplify and streamline important business moments.
• Coordinate and organise with intuitive out-of-the-box features.

Aligning your sales and marketing teams with an integrated collection of tools makes it possible to manage and improve each step of the customer journey. 

Coordinate Customer Engagement
Redundant or poorly timed communications from an organisation are frustrating and inconvenient for prospects and customers. With Dynamics 365 Marketing, you can;

• Take web, email, social media, and events to the next level with the Customer Journey feature.
• Plan and run new campaigns with out-of-the-box templates and get real-time visibility into prospect activities.
• Build customised nurture programs to give sales and marketing a shared understanding of the buyer journey and how those journeys differ across segments and personas.

Use these in-depth insights to deliver timely, relevant customer engagement that is tailored to each prospect, increasing the likelihood of a sale.

Improve Targeting and Lead Prioritisation
Batch-and-blast marketing is no longer an effective technique. Generic, unrequested emails often lead to blanket unsubscribes and lost opportunities, and new regulations can result in penalties for this type of marketing. Modernise your approach and take it to the next level by delivering customised and dynamic content to customers using D365 Sales and Marketing. With a detailed demographic and behavioral understanding of contacts, sales and marketing teams have an integrated view of who their prospects are and what they’re interested in.

A unified solution gives you the ability to track marketing programs (such as web, email, social media, and ads) and sales activities (like events, calls, and meetings) in one shared database. And list segmentation lets you filter contacts based on any attribute or behavior associated with those contacts, letting you target those focused segments with personalised content.

Get More Leads and Marketing Attributed Revenue
Marketing and sales teams work in tandem to deliver leads and convert those leads to revenue. How revenue is attributed varies from organisation to organisation, but the right technology makes the journey from lead to sale clear. Using sophisticated web tracking, Marketing compiles all prospect data into contact records to present a complete picture of contact engagement history. As each contact progresses through the customer journey, all activities are tracked and visible to both sales and marketing teams.

Book a consultation with Aspira today to see how your Sales and Marketing Team can benefit from Dynamics 365 Sales & Marketing.