Sales Team Structure: Why 91% Of Top Selling Organizations Work Together to Close

These stats show the level of improvement needed with regards to working across functions in your sales team structure.

Improving the level of communication between teams and consulting different functions can bring better results overall and help each function do their job better. In other words, a better sales team structure emerges. 

Today, it’s almost customary for high selling organizations to work in this fashion, especially when they have a major account in site. In this article, we’ll explore why they do it and how it benefits.

Source — Saleswingsapp

1 To Improve the Sales Team’s Lead Scoring Process

Lead scoring refers to the practice of “scoring” or ranking leads differently based on predetermined values.

For example, you may rank email leads who signed up for a free ebook as having a lesser value than leads who subscribed to your list after signing up for a free trial.

In turn, those leads would have a lesser value than leads who subscribed to your list after purchasing one of your paid products.

There are other metrics that you can use to score leads. For example, you can rank leads based on their age, income, demographics, location, or which channel they signed up on (social media vs your blog vs via a paid ad, for example).

Lead scoring can save the sales team time and effort. By focusing on leads that were assigned a higher value (in other words, leads that are more likely to convert), they can avoid wasting time trying to achieve more difficult conversions and increase their overall ROI.

For this to happen, there has to be open communication between marketing and sales.

Marketing can supply sales with data about which leads have higher values. In turn, the sales team can refine and improve marketing lead scoring process by supplying the marketing team with feedback about which leads are indeed more likely to convert.

2 To Improve the Marketing Team’s Targeting Accuracy

Communication between marketing and sales will benefit both teams. The sales team can analyze their sales in order to get more accurate data about which demographics are more likely to convert.

Not only can the marketing team use that data to refine their lead scoring accuracy, as mentioned above, but they can use it to improve their targeting accuracy.

Sales can supply marketing with data about which demographics make up the majority of sales conversions. Marketing can use that data to target those on their social media and PPC campaigns, thus improving their ROI.

3 To Improve Marketing/Sales/Product Development With Market and Consumer Research

All departments have a lot to gain from open communication with the market and consumer research teams.

Even if the company does not have a built-in market research team, it is still important that marketing and sales pay attention to the latest market research.

Market research lets you stay on top of consumer trends and up to date on the ebb and flow of consumer demand.

By listening to what consumers are saying, both marketing and sales can improve their campaigns.

The marketing team can refine their advertising messages to touch on the points that consumers are concerned about.

They can discover what different demographics want and target each group accordingly.

Of course, the teams in charge of product planning, development, and production need to stay tuned to the latest market research as well.

They need to know what kind of products consumers want, which products are no longer in demand, and what kinds of improvements or changes consumers are looking for in existing products.

Sales will benefit from market research as well.

By knowing what consumers are looking for, they will be able to refine their sales pitches and not waste their time by focusing on irrelevant features when pitching to consumers.

Source — Twitter

4 How Customer Support Can Help?

Customer support can be a fantastic source of feedback about what consumers actually want.

For example, customer support can supply the product, marketing, and sales teams with data about the top issues consumers are complaining about.

The product team can then go ahead and fix those issues in future products so that the customer satisfaction rate rises.

This also has the potential to cut down on needless product development cost. In other words, features that customers hardly find useful can be left out.

Customer support can also supply marketing with information about which demographics are the highest maintenance (meaning which ones request the most refunds, ask for the most replacements, complain the most, etc).

Marketing and sales can then focus fewer of their efforts and resources on those demographics.

This will also affect your brand image, as you will end up weeding out those customers who are more likely to write a bad review on the internet.

Source — G2msolutions.com.au

5 To Improve Sales With Marketing

Marketing and sales have more to benefit from collaborating with each other than simply sharing data.

Marketing likely has a number of tips on how salespeople can improve their sales pitches, present themselves in a better matter, and use tactics such as social proof to boost their credibility.

Of course, as we’ll see later, marketing and sales need to adopt the same tone as well.

Tips for How to Improve Sales Team Structure 

In this section, we’ll discuss how organizations actually encourage sales team structure. We’ll see how they improve communication and collaboration across functions.

Share Important Data

Many times, the same data will be important to different teams and functions, but for different reasons.

For example, when it comes to conversions and the demographics that have a higher conversion rate, marketing will be interested in order to find out who they should target in the future, while sales will be interested to know who will be easier to close a deal with.

Collaborating and sharing data such as leads, sales, conversions, impressions, subscribers, ad click-throughs, and more will help everyone be better at their job.

Source — Slideshare.net

Hold Regular Meetings

Holding regular collaboration meetings is a great way to share ideas, collaborate on data, analyze results, and work together so that every team benefits and improves thanks to the other ones.

These meetings can be general meetings where all teams come together to share ideas and information.

It can also be smaller meetings where only two or three teams come together and share information that is pertinent to those other teams.

Keep Communication Open

It’s important to focus on opening up communication channels between teams. Besides holding meetings, think of other ways to keep the lines of communication open.

For example, teams can collaborate via emails or on a special chat group on Whatsapp or Facebook Messenger.

They can ask each other questions and share information and tips that can be vital to the other team.

You can also organize after-work social events so that members of different teams can socialize and establish connections.

Keep Things Clear

A common obstacle that teams face when collaborating across functions is that the terminology used by different teams is often different.

For example, marketing may use terms that are foreign to product development or even to sales.

When meeting or communicating via other channels, it is important that everyone is clear about what is being discussed. Reduce the usage of complicated jargon or explain it clearly.

Company Culture Is Important

Maintaining the right company culture is crucial for effective collaboration. Everyone, on all teams, has to be on the same page.

First of all, everyone has to have the same motivation to want to see the business succeed. Everyone has to be eager to help out other functions for the good of the business overall.

All functions must be aligned with the general goals of the corporation. As the manager or CEO, you have to lead from the top down.

In addition, every team must present themselves in the same manner. Sales must present the same tone and the same values to customers as marketing.

If marketing adopts a certain tone and personality and consumers see a totally different tone when they are contacted by the sales team, it can not only be confusing but it can reduce your conversion rates.

The entire point of the marketing and sales processes is slowly working potential customers through the various stages of the purchasing decision until they make a purchase, and that should seamless.

Source — Inlox

Lead From the Top Down

As mentioned before, everything depends on how you lead and manage your business. Instill your values in your team.

Make sure everyone is aligned with your values and goals. Encourage them and motivate them to reach them.

Set smaller goals. Reward teams when they reach goals or milestones.

Recognize individual team members for outstanding work. This will help them feel that you value them and that their work is worthwhile, and it will also motivate others to follow in their footsteps.

Keep in mind that not all team members may understand why it is important to work with other teams.

Make sure that they see the bigger picture – how collaboration will help with your overall revenue and growth over the years. How it will have a long-lasting impact in increasing customer value with your brand.

Encourage them to think about other teams and how collaboration will help other teams do their work better.

Help them understand the challenges that other teams face and how working together can help them overcome obstacles.

Wrapping It Up

The three biggest obstacles towards marketing and sales alignment are lack of communication, broken or flawed processes, and working towards different metrics.

Strive to improve alignment across all functions to improve the sales team structure and see your growth skyrocket.