Getting sales and marketing to work together can feel like a real challenge, but it's worth the effort. One way to get them thinking like a team is to let those two groups actually get together and interact in person.
Regular meetings between the two groups fosters communication and collaboration, and helps sales and marketing managers improve their tactics.
You should hold two types of meetings:
- Weekly Sales and Marketing Meeting
- A Monthly Management Meeting
Weekly Sales and Marketing Meeting
Get the entire team together at least once a week to discuss recent results and upcoming activities. The size of your organization will determine the format of this weekly meeting.
For a company with only a handful of sales and marketing staffers, the meeting can be a highly interactive session, welcoming discussion and questions from anyone in the group.
But for a larger company with dozens of marketing and sales staff, the meeting should be a fast-paced, high-level overview to keep sales and marketing teams on the same page and moving toward the Service-level Agreement (SLA) goals.
Tips for Running Meetings:
- Keep It Short: It’ll be best if you can keep meetings short and to-the-point. If you can keep it to 30-40 minutes, that will be great. Just make sure it doesn’t go over an hour.
- Pick Timing Carefully: Hold it at the end of day to avoid disrupting the sales team’s prime calling time.
- Pick Presenters: Designate one presenter each from Sales and Marketing to deliver their half of the update. That update should include current status toward SLA goals, plans for upcoming activities, recent highlights or big wins, and so on.
Think of it more as a performance than a dry presentation of charts and metrics. Look for presenters who can entertain and energize the group while quickly conveying the most important quantitative details.
Monthly Management Meetings
The monthly management meeting is an opportunity to take a deep dive into results and to hash out upcoming plans, strategy questions, and any potential problems that may be nudging your sales and marketing teams out of alignment.
Invite three to five key managers from the sales and marketing teams to the monthly meeting, and empower them to work on the issues that affect sales and marketing alignment. In this way, they will forge solid relationships that will help your organization scale as your company grows.
Suggested Agenda Items
Agenda items for the monthly management meeting include:
- Review of Metrics: Detailed discussion of closed-loop analysis reports and current funnel metrics, so sales and marketing can address any issues related to meeting the requirements of the SLA.
- Future Plans: Sharing plans for future marketing or sales projects, and discussion of potential strategy changes.
- Discussion Items: Resolving disputes between sales and marketing about lead quality or quantity, sales follow-up efforts, the definition of the Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL), or any other important terminology or practices.
