Increase Field Service Revenue with Improved Marketing and Sales Alignment

One way in which field service is no different from any other industry is in the fact that it relies on marketing and sales to operate effectively. Marketing gets the brand message out there, draws in potential new customers, and aims to generate leads. It's then on the sales department to take those leads and convert them into contract clients.

However, due to miscommunication, ineffective processes, and a lack of common goals, these two disparate arms of the business can often become siloed, and clashes can ensue.

The time has come to bring these two departments into alignment, optimise and streamline their strategies, and turn them into a single cohesive team for the betterment of the entire organisation.

Break Down Barriers to Collaboration

This should be the first port of call on any journey towards marketing and sales alignment. Sales needs the information that has been gathered from and sent to customers by the marketing department, and the marketing department needs sales feedback in return to better craft their strategies moving forward.

Thankfully, there are plenty of excellent tools out there that can help your organisation achieve this feat and make collaboration between sales and marketing run a whole lot more smoothly.

Cloud-based storage solutions such as Dropbox and Google Drive will allow your departments joint access to the same library of documents. This ensures any updates or changes are disseminated to everyone simultaneously, eliminating the possibility of your people working with out-of-date materials.

Other collaboration platforms such as Trello or Basecamp make it easy to create boards for individual projects, assign staff/teams to each, and track the progress of all your company's spinning plates.

Bring Terminology and Process Together

One of the main reasons marketing and sales alignment fails is because they use different terminology and processes.

Create official documents which lay out exactly what is meant by terms such as "lead", "prospect", and "opportunity" to eliminate confusion and frustration. Develop buyer personas to enable the two teams to work together with strategies which align with a very specific target demographic - there can be no alignment while sales and marketing are identifying different companies as potential clients.

Finally, create a written document to set in stone the roles of each department along the sales funnel. This document can be referred to whenever any confusion about the alignment between sales and marketing arises and should be reviewed and updated regularly.

Physically Bring the Two Teams Together

This won't always be possible due to office space or geographical constraints, but you will see improvement if sales and marketing can work from the same room.

Communication will flow, questions or issues can be addressed with ease, and the misinterpreting of written communications will be significantly reduced. Inter-personal relationships will also develop, creating a more harmonious and friendly working environment.

On top of bringing the workplace together, you can also see benefits from allowing your sales and marketing departments to spend time together outside of the working day. Arrange team-building days, nights out, and other excursions to further develop those friendships and interpersonal relationships. This technique is particularly useful if having sales and marketing working in the same room is not possible.

Regular meetings or huddles will also help improve communication between teams and allow issues to be raised and debated in a controlled and structured environment.

Develop Aligned Content

Content can be the final push which encourages a prospect to turn into a client, so leverage the knowledge and experience of both your teams to create the best material possible.

Marketing and sales can use their combined expertise to create case studies. This content can help answer prospects' questions by laying out the challenges faced by their peers, and the ways in which your field service organisation helped to overcome them. By developing this content in partnership, your sales and marketing teams can ensure consistent messaging and tone and thereby boost engagement.

Being on the same page content-wise will help sales have better conversations with leads and opportunities about what articles they've read or videos/infographics they've viewed, and help close those all-important deals.

Final Thoughts

Sales and marketing alignment is a key component of a successful field service business, and those companies which achieve it will see the results in their bottom line.

Writing for Forbes, Brenda Stoltz, CEO of inbound marketing company Ariad Partners, said, "Alignment between sales and marketing teams in B2B companies is a continuous process of growth, communication, and commitment to practicing the strategies that will generate high-quality leads and sales."

Marketing and sales alignment is set to be a hot topic at Field Service Europe 2018, taking place this November at the NH Collection Amsterdam Grand Hotel Krasnapolsky, Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Download the Agenda today for more insights and information.