In order to reap the substantial rewards available in the marketing space, sales and marketing teams need to work together. Integration between all departments is important, but when the ultimate goal of marketing is converting leads and sales teams are using marketing material, companies will get better returns. A survey from sales performance management software provider CallidusCloud examines developments in integration during 2015.
Indeed, integration is key to ensuring profits. Companies that don?t align departments well can see revenue drops of 7 percent, while highly aligned organizations can see revenue growth of 32 percent. Other studies cited indicate that three-year growth in revenue and profit can happen 24 percent and 27 percent faster, respectively. However, very few of the marketing and sales professionals surveyed believed their departments were well aligned. 56 percent believed their teams were somewhat aligned, while 19 percent said they were somewhat misaligned and 9 percent believed they were misaligned.
A large part of this divide may come down to the technology in use. 31 percent are using an integrated sales and marketing solution, but 40 percent are using stand-alone applications for each team. 11.9 percent are manually operating using spreadsheets, which is a sure-fire way to slow down integration. With a cohesive technological solution, departments should be able to work a lot closer with one another.
Sales and marketing departments are starting ...