According to the report “State of Marketing” from the global network CMO Council, lost sales productivity, wasted marketing budgets and poorly treated leads are responsible for companies globally losing the equivalent of at least 768 billion British Pounds every year.

The reason for the lost sales productivity, the wasted marketing budgets and the poorly treated leads must be found, among other things, in missing or poor collaboration between sales and marketing.

A study conducted by the renowned research and consulting company Forrester Research shows that only 8% of the companies asked have said that they have strong collaboration between their sales and marketing departments.

Marketing Lead at AlfaPeople, Gitte Højgaard Mouritsen, believes that silo division and one-sided focus on own efforts among salespeople and marketers can be to blame for the poor collaboration.

“The problem is that it is in the best interest of the department, but not the organisation. It is a huge problem if the leads that marketing produces are not handled by Sales. In the worst case, this means lost growth and turnover,” says Gitte Højgaard Mouritsen.

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Collaboration between sales and marketing supports critical growth

The positive thing is that the companies know it well. A LinkedIn survey conducted among companies in the UK, Ireland, France and Germany shows that 87% of sales and marketing managers believe that collaboration between sales and marketing supports critical business growth and higher sales rates.

According to Gitte Højgaard Mouritsen, this is because a strong collaboration between sales and marketing enables salespeople to hit potential customers at exactly the right time.

“You get hold of the customer when the customer needs it. But there is no longer knocking on the door, now it is the customers who speak up when they need it. And being able to be “the helping hand” means an incredible amount in a market full of competitors,” says Gitte Højgaard Mouritsen.

CRM system creates fertile ground for collaboration

Danish companies that do not have a proper interaction between sales and marketing therefore miss out on the benefits in a big way.

One way to create fertile ground for better collaboration between sales and marketing can be to implement a CRM system such as Microsoft Dynamics 365, explains Gitte Højgaard Mouritsen.

“Microsoft Dynamics 365 provides both tools for sales and marketing, but basically it’s still about talking together. By using Microsoft Dynamics 365, it becomes clear how sales and marketing can help each other,” says Gitte Højgaard Mouritsen.

The management gets clarity about the business

Gitte Højgaard Mouritsen points out that Microsoft Dynamics 365 gives management the opportunity to get a much better overview of all aspects of the company.

Management gets more certainty about the lifecycle of a customer, it gets more information about when the business is healthy, and it gets consistency.

“The management will be able to set KPIs for the entire organization and not just for departments or employees. This ensures a common frame of reference for the company. In this way, it also gets a better insight into what the budget looks like and how the company and the individual employee are doing,” says Gitte Højgaard Mouritsen.

Are sales and marketing aligned? Answer 9 questions and find out

Teams integration supports collaboration between sales and marketing

Today, cross-departmental collaboration is common as they work on a marketing campaign, troubleshoot a sales opportunity, or solve a customer problem. Dynamics 365 and Teams integration provides the opportunity to make collaboration more flexible and faster, because knowledge can be easily shared across all stakeholders.

Using Teams integration, you can invite everyone in your organization to view and collaborate directly in a Teams chat. You can also make and receive calls from Dynamics 365 and get work done more efficiently. As a seller, you can share information about the sales opportunity, customer overview and much more. As a customer service employee, you can share the customer case, carry out troubleshooting and track the follow-ups that are related to resolving the customer’s inquiry.

Teams can be integrated with Dynamics 365 Sales, Dynamics 365 Customer Service, Dynamics 365 Field Service, Dynamics 365 Marketing and Dynamics 365 Project Service Automation.

Source: Microsoft