Michael Bird and Nik Sproal of Social Garden sit down to discuss the barriers that are often faced when sales and marketing teams come together, highlighting the benefits that a sales and marketing alignment strategy can provide in generating revenue and improving customer journeys. Watch the video below!
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MIKE:
Hey, my name’s Mike, I'm the CEO at Social Garden. I'm here with our Client Service Director, Nik Sproal. And today we're going to have a quick chat about marketing and sales alignment and how we can get this two business functions in the property sector working together to deliver a much better kind of customer journey and overall customer experience. So, in terms of what you’ve been seeing work across, as you said, you've worked at Stockland, Investa, across all kind of the major corporate property developers. And then, obviously here at Social Garden. What are some things that you’re seeing work well when sales and marketing teams kind of team up? And what are some of the barriers to that right now?
NIK:
Look, I think some of the key things you really see is that when sales and marketing work well together, not only does it drive the sales process and make a smoother process and make sure that I guess you’re maximising your sales opportunities, it also actually really helps with other elements of the business like driving the product mix, driving the pricing, driving all the element that ultimately make a successful campaign in the long term. And also deliver a project that actually delivers profit and delivers consistent sales results. By having those teams working together it can have a really powerful insight to drive a whole multitude of touchpoints within the project not just the sales/marketing experience themselves.
MIKE:
Yeah, I mean, so many times when we first go in and start working with the client there’s kind of like an invisible wall or sometimes a literal wall that sits between marketing and sales. When marketing is kind of responsible for brand and for generating leads and they kind of chuck them over the fence, and in sales either is loving it and they’re accepting the leads and they want more and they kind of blame not having more on marketing. Or there’s kind of an issue with lead quality, so the two functions historically, start to have kind of clashed heads -
NIK:
Absolutely.
MIKE:
But certainly when we look at the why the consumer journey had changed, and there is so much of the decision making process is happening online before a prospect ever engage a salesperson. Really marketing is significantly in a more responsible for that revenue piece.
NIK:
Definitely.
MIKE:
And for driving the customer experience and making sure that the sales team have really good qualified enquiries to deal with.
NIK:
Absolutely, I think one of the key things we've seen change is that marketing were probably always held responsible for softer metrics around click-through rates and impressions and so forth. But by moving that further down the funnel and making marketing more responsible for cost-per-lead, cost-per-appointment attended and so forth, it provides comfort for the sales team that we're driving the right quality of enquiries and it ultimately makes the marketing team have I guess, a seat at the table in terms of making those decisions and being involved in those elements that drive the revenue piece.
MIKE:
Yeah, I think it's just so important that it’s really clear upfront before going into a - whether it’s a new apartment project, or land project - whatever it might be. Really important that, what is determined to be a marketing lead and what is a sales lead, is super important. Because if you don't have that clearly defined upfront it’s just gonna automatically, like create friction even before you even begin. So, by getting everyone kind of around the table at the same time, having marketing talking to sales, thinking about what are the qualifying questions that a prospect needs to answer in order for that person to be ready to speak to the salesperson. I think having that clear is a good start.
NIK:
I couldn't agree more Mike. I think what you see, is we do start to drive a higher volume of leads, what the sales team are looking for is markers that indicate to them where a prospect is at in their journey and if we can build models around that whether it be a progressive profiling model--
MIKE:
Do you want to just talk about what progressive profiling is.
NIK:
Yeah, absolutely. Obviously, as you were talking about marketing lead versus the sales lead, the marketing lead might be simply providing a base level information to get people to move into the CRM.
MIKE:
So for example, they might download an information pack from the lead capture page or from a website.
NIK:
Absolutely. So, a sales lead is someone who’s actually provide information about what sort of product they're looking for? Do they have finance in place? How much money do they have to spend? What sort of—how many homes or how many rooms they're looking for? So it really provides a much more granular level of detail around who they are, where they’re at in the journey and what they’re seeking. So, by being able to provide or capture that information during the lead capture phase, we’re actually giving the sales team almost to leg up to actually start their conversation with that buyer based on relevant information that’s pertinent to that discussion. So it becomes very personalised and very one-to-one rather than a simplified process that replied to every single enquiry.
MIKE:
Okay, cool. So that’s our episode on marketing and sales alignment in the property sector. If you’re interested in learning more, just feel free to download our guide, Sales and Marketing Alignment with in Property and we'll chat to you soon. Thanks!
NIK
: Thank you.
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