{"id":934,"date":"2014-01-28T06:53:19","date_gmt":"2014-01-28T06:53:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/?p=934"},"modified":"2014-01-28T06:53:19","modified_gmt":"2014-01-28T06:53:19","slug":"five-steps-to-align-your-small-business-marketing-and-sales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/five-steps-to-align-your-small-business-marketing-and-sales\/","title":{"rendered":"Five steps to align your small business marketing and sales"},"content":{"rendered":"
But marketing and sales do not always align. Messages that marketing conveys via promotional channels and those sales delivers to customers and prospects during one-on-one interactions often are out of sync.<\/p>\n With the emergence of social media, such conflicts are inherently more of a problem than they were in the past. Today\u2019s buyers are far more educated than before. Social media<\/a> has enabled marketing departments to hold conversations with customers and prospects well before sales steps in to follow up with a lead or respond to an inquiry. As a result, inconsistencies between marketing and sales messages can cause confusion that may drive buyers to the competition.<\/p>\n When your company is small and the marketing and sales functions are handled by a few team members, it\u2019s not difficult to manage communication between the two functions. However, as your small business grows, there is potential for a gap to emerge between the two functions. At its worse, some departments share a poor view of each other. According to a survey <\/a>conducted by the Corporate Executive Board, 87 percent of the terms used by sales and marketing to describe one another were negative.<\/p>\n<\/a>How effectively are your marketing and sales teams working together? After all, they both have the same goal \u2013 to help generate revenue for your small business. It makes sense that the two functions should go hand in hand with marketing helping to generate leads by communicating the value of your offerings to the marketplace and sales converting leads into agreements.<\/p>\n