Take a moment to put yourself in the shoes of your typical customer. Customers like it when they are working with a team whose vision is focused entirely on them—their success, their satisfaction, and their happiness.

As a business leader, you might think of bringing sales and marketing together like introducing two of your best friends — you want them to get along so you can all have a fun night out. If they start arguing or purposely ignoring each other, guess who’s caught in the middle, suddenly regretting the whole evening?

Ending Age-Old Tensions for the Good of Customers

Creating an atmosphere for good sales and marketing teamwork can be a real challenge, but in the end, it adds to a great customer experience. Rarely fast friends, these two essential but sometimes-warring factions each feel they have the stronger grievance.

The sales team feels that marketing doesn’t provide strong enough leads to help them close the deal. Marketers believe the leads they provide are solid and that the sales team squanders them.

If you find yourself caught in the middle of this endless tug-of-war, or you’re afraid that it’s negatively affecting your customers’ experience of your company, here are a few pointers for realistically achieving a detente.

Demonstrate Why Sales and Marketing Teamwork Can be Mutually Beneficial

Instead of being an adversary, marketing can be an ally for your sales team. Marketing does the legwork of building a customer profile, determining how best to attract that customer, and drawing that customer in so that by the time the customer talks to sales, they’re already pre-disposed to want to buy the product or service.

“Part of the job of inbound marketers is to gain insight into the buyer’s need for information at every stage of the journey,” writes Max Traylor for HubSpot Marketing. “Marketing can then pass the knowledge gained about each prospect’s unique needs, priorities and objections on to Sales so that Sales can engage qualified leads with greater insight and understanding of the specific requirements to close the sale.”

Solid sales and marketing teamwork means that sales can feed marketing typical prospective questions so marketing can address them with customers up front, eliminating potential roadblocks to closing the deal.

Marketing can also evaluate the competition so your sales team can learn what might be driving customers to look elsewhere. If the sales team knows what the competitors are offering, they can rethink their pitch and offer reasons why your company is the better choice.

Realize That Customer Behavior is Changing

It used to be that the sales team was the first point of contact between your customers and your product or service. But as your sales team will tell you, these days they’re lucky to get a call back from a customer.

With so many potential customers researching brands, products and services online before they buy, marketing and sales both need to adjust their approach to changing customer behavior. 

Sales and marketing both need to figure out how they are going to engage a potential customer who doesn’t answer the phone, spends the majority of their time online and has already made up their mind about your company before even speaking to anyone.

A Little Healthy Competition is OK 

According to Harvard Business Review, “The tension created by diverse viewpoints also has a positive side. It sparks creativity and ensures that multiple sides of issues are expressed. Sales makes certain that customer needs are addressed and that short-term company revenue goals are achieved; marketing ensures that product and customer segment strategies anticipate the evolution of longer-term customer needs.”

One Goal: Loyal, Happy Customers

So, good sales and marketing teamwork doesn't require that the two departments become BFFs. But, they should be aware of the benefits of working together to increase productivity. A unified staff should be on the same page and recognize they are both working toward a common goal: loyal and happy customers.

To help align the departments in your organization, our helpful e-book below defines some global communication terms that your staff should know for better understanding of today's communication technology. 

Image credit: team