#we have 208 lives to document like there’s not much to complain about

[sunboki]

did you see that there’s not gonna be more chans room😭

i did 💔 but i know it’s for the best and he wouldn’t want us to be sad so i’ll just hope he enjoys his sundays and takes care of himself :)

[torontotravelblog]

A VERY CANADIAN 3 DAYS IN TORONTO

Those who assume Canada is all about nature have actually plainly never ever been to Toronto. Canada's biggest city stacks up with the very best of them, thanks to its varied social communities, special areas, countless restaurants, as well as sufficient destinations to maintain you inhabited for several years.

Of course, many travellers won't have years to spend. So here are a few points you can accomplish in a long weekend:

Day 1: Take your taste buds on holiday

Markets are a great method to find out about the city you're seeing. The foods and item on-sale commonly provide understanding right into individuals behind the place. Toronto is no exception. There's the timeless St. Lawrence Market, which at 208 years of ages has been a big part of the city considering that almost the start. There you'll find 120 vendors, with the freshest produce, meats, baked good, as well as dairy products for your perusing. Then there's Kensington Market. This extraordinary neighbourhood really reflects the diversity that makes Toronto so special. Caribbean, Latin American, European, as well as Vietnamese immigrants have all left their stamp on the city, and that effect can be scented, tasted, and appreciated throughout Kensington Market.

Take, as an example, Rasta Pasta, which serves up Jamaican and also Italian blend cuisine. Don't stop at it till you attempt dishes like Reggae Lasagna, which incorporates jerk chicken with even more traditional pasta components, or the Tuscan, a jerk pork panini.

Naturally, Toronto's food scene extends well past market overflowing food scene. Right here are a few even more choices greater than worth your while.

Little plates, big flavours. That's what The Chase essentially brings to the table. Named among Canada's best brand-new dining establishments in 2014 by EnRoute publication, this is someplace to go with a sophisticated dish to remember. Order one of their seafood platters for a spread of oysters, snow crab, and tuna that you will not soon forget.

An additional favorite, Hawker Bar serves up meals inspired by Southeast Eastern road food, along with creative cocktails. Plus, it's open up until 2 get on Fridays and also Saturdays, so you can visit at the end of the evening to unwind as well as appreciate their delicious chili wings.

If you're much more interested in a beverage, head simply outside the city to the Junction area and also pay a visit to Rainhard Brewing, Halo Brewery, or numerous others in the area. If alcoholic drinks are a lot more your speed, there are few extra timeless Toronto experiences than a beverage enjoyed on the rooftop patio of the Drake hotel.

Rasta Pasta

Where: Kensington Market

What to order: The Vatican panini and also some jerk poultry dumplings

Hours: Tuesday-Saturday, 11 am to 7pm; Sunday, 11 am to 6 pm. Closed on Monday.

The Chase

Where: Midtown

What to order: Oysters ... or any fish and shellfish really

Hrs: Monday-Friday, 11:30 am - 11 pm, Saturday 5 pm - 12 am, closed on Sunday

Hawker Bar

Where: Trinity Bellwoods

What to order: Singapore chili poultry wings

Hrs: Monday-Thursday 6 pm - 10 pm, 6 pm - 2 am Friday, 5 pm - 2 am Saturday, 5 pm - 10 pm Sunday

Day 2: Take your journey to new heights

At 533 metres in height, the representative CN Tower dominates the sky line of Toronto, as well as supplies experiences for foodies and adrenaline addicts both.

Take a walk 113 tales in the air with nothing separating you from the ground other than a glass floor and a great deal of air. Or, if that's not enough of a thrill, head outside the tower for Toronto's a lot of extreme tourist attraction. The EdgeWalk sees you strap into a harness, tiptoe onto an outside walkway, and lean out over the edge. No hands!

Do elevations make you lose your lunch? Why not have lunch instead? For an extra tame CN Tower experience, enjoy an extraordinary dining experience with a revolving sight of Toronto at the 360 Dining establishment. Along with the superb food, the restaurant's wine rack (Guinness Globe Document Holder as the highest possible storage on the planet, by the way) features a delicious range of fine wines.

The CN Tower

Where: Midtown Toronto (Home Entertainment District).

Hrs: Monitoring decks are open from 8:30 am - 11 pm and also 360 Dining establishment is open from 11 am - 10:15 pm year round (except Xmas day). EdgeWalk runs seasonally, except in electrical storms, high winds, or other extreme weather condition.

Prices: General admission is approximately ₤ 23 (or $38 CAD). The EdgeWalk experience costs around ₤ 120 (or $195 CAD).

Day 3: Embrace your inner Canadian.

Even though there are a lot of stereotypes about Canadians, it's actually quite challenging to suggest of Canada with simply one brush (not that being friendly as well as liking plaid are a negative point). That being claimed, Toronto has a couple of experiences that will certainly leave you seeming like you really welcomed your vacation surroundings.

First, head to the Art Gallery of Ontario to see the largest collection of Canadian art on the planet, consisting of many works from Canada's renowned Group of 7. These are art pieces that catch the Canadian landscape and also way of life, as well as are a great way to discover the nation. And also, Canadian jobs comprise just a few of the impressive 90,000 works of art that live inside the gallery's wall surfaces. From photography to sculpture, Picasso to Rembrandt, it's all there. After that there's the structure itself, which features an extension made by world-renowned designer Frank Gehry. If you like art, you'll like the AGO.

Next off, there are couple of points more commonly connected with Canada than hockey however that's a stereotype we'll never complain about. In Toronto, the Hockey Hall of Popularity is the outright ideal location to learn about the sporting activity as well as its background, all while taking on fun obstacles like capturing, goaltending, as well as hockey trivia.

After a day spent finding out, invest your night delighting in some good old-fashioned axe-throwing. While 99 percent of Canadians have actually possibly never tossed an axe, we certainly like our woodsmen background! Head to Bad Axe Throwing, get an axe that tickles your fancy, and throw it at a wooden target till you strike that oh-so-satisfying bullseye. You won't locate a better means to allow off some vapor.

The post “ A VERY CANADIAN 3 DAYS IN TORONTO “ was originally seen on Canada For Glowing Heart

Toronto Naturopathic Doctor - Dr. Amauri Caversan, ND

[zacdhaenkeau]

5 Practical Ways to Strengthen Your Sales and Marketing Partnership

Imagine a world where sales and marketing can actually work together and, in fact, help one another instead of stepping on each others’ toes. A world where roles are clearly defined and prospects enjoy a smooth traversal through the funnel. Never a gap, never a hang-up.

A boy can dream.

Creating a strong partnership between sales and marketing teams has plagued companies since…well, forever. There are a plethora of sticking points that make alignment of any kind a challenge in itself. To muddy the waters even more, organizations are frequently updating their systems and processes, which leads to miscommunication or even worse, no communication at all.

Often times, sales and marketing professionals actually think their jobs are harder because of their counterpart’s “incompetencies.” How many times have you heard sales reps complain about a lack of quality leads? How many marketers have you heard criticizing sales’ aptitude for squandering opportunities they worked so hard to provide? This pessimistic outlook not only makes for awkward company Christmas parties, but it also impacts the buyer journey and, ultimately, the bottom line.

It doesn’t have to be this way. A recent study found that a strong partnership between sales and marketing “results in 208% more value from marketing with 108% less friction.” There are real, practical steps that, when applied, not only keep sales and marketing off each others’ backs but help them work together to achieve their goals and engage with customers in a unified manner.

In this post, I will share five tactics that you can use today to ease the tension between your sales and marketing teams and deliver a joint effort towards driving revenue and winning opportunities.

1. Reward the Team That Wasn’t (Directly) Involved

It’s easy to praise marketing when there’s a success at the top of the funnel. The same goes for sales at the bottom of the funnel. But if each respective team can show their appreciation for their counterpart’s contribution, it reinforces the idea of a communal effort throughout the entire funnel. A little recognition can go a long way, so the next time a deal is closed, make sure the demand generation team gets a shoutout for properly scoring the lead in the first place. And marketers, before you get high and mighty for delivering quality SQL’s, don’t forget that sales works tirelessly to convert those and keep the organization’s engine running.

It sounds almost too simple to be true, but it’s important to remember that we’re human beings working with other human beings. We enjoy feeling valued and recognized for our hard work. Make a point of sharing the fruits of your labor with everyone who played a part, and you’ll be amazed at their willingness to help you be successful again down the road. You can’t move forward as a unified team if you don’t celebrate like one.

2. Keep the Customer at the Core of Your Efforts

As much as we’re talking about helping sales and marketing partner more effectively, that is NOT the end goal. The customer’s satisfaction must be the heartbeat behind whatever actions your teams decide to make. Focusing on what makes your prospect happy can alleviate some of the “us vs. them” tension that arises between sales and marketing. Use the customer’s satisfaction (or lack thereof) as your benchmark, and the partnership between your two teams will improve without having to think too hard about it. Though tempting to focus on quotas and campaign stats, your customers are best served by a joint effort between sales and marketing. When your focus shifts away from personal performance and towards that high-level goal, you’ll be amazed how well your organization will operate.

A joint goal of providing the best content, service, and personalization to pipeline efforts will lead to more collaboration and more open transparency between sales and marketing. Marketing will want to provide sales all the collateral they need because their focus isn’t on simply relaying leads to them, but making sure the lead is taken care of at every stage of their journey. Organizations who can keep customer satisfaction at the forefront of their efforts don’t even have to consider strengthening their sales and marketing partnership; it just happens. 

3. Understand When to Butt in—and When to Buzz Off 

The poor marketer, well-intentioned as she can be, frequently doesn’t know how to act once the lead has been handed off to the sales team. Can she continue to nurture, or will that mess up the flow the sales rep is building? Sales and marketing must reach an understanding—set boundaries on how much will each team engage the prospect, and make sure that each piece of content marketing sends fits into the context that sales has worked hard to create.

This gray area used to be known as “the handoff,” but these days it may be best defined as “mid-funnel” (or MOFU), as there is no longer a definitive moment where marketing walks away from the account and sales picks it up. Because of this, a well-orchestrated cadence of communication must be agreed upon in advance, so marketing knows when outreach will help the sales team, rather than detract from their efforts.

This involves a level of visibility that many companies currently lack. As it stands now, sales teams commonly live in their CRM platform, while marketing operates on their own platforms. Though these systems “talk” to one another, it doesn’t allow either team to easily see what actions the other has taken. As a salesperson, how can you be confident you’re providing your customer valuable and previously unseen information if you don’t know what content the marketing team has already sent them? Without having the ability to see the entirety of information that your prospect has been given, you run the risk of sounding redundant, or worse, impersonal.

4. Clearly Define the Roles of Marketing and Sales and How They Work Together

This goes far beyond simply saying “marketing does X, sales does Y.” Just as a doctor isn’t only a doctor, marketers aren’t just marketers, and salespeople aren’t just that either. To increase productivity (and show your colleagues respect), make sure your sales team is familiar with the different roles and responsibilities of the marketing team. Clearly define for them what demand generation, content marketing, product marketing, customer marketing, and marketing operations are responsible for, and what success looks like for them. Do the same for your marketing team. Make sure they’re up to speed on the ins and outs of the sales team and what responsibilities sales development representatives have, how you define commercial vs. enterprise, and the responsibilities of your account executives and customer success managers. Not only will their team appreciate your attempt to understand their roles and responsibilities, but you’ll save time by knowing exactly who to go to with an issue.

Make sure your cross-departmental processes and protocols include specifics —there should be a documented answer to questions like “who should I go to if I need to track down an ebook we published four years ago?” “When did sales last have a call with this prospect, and what should I send them next?” Set your teams up for success and avoid generalizations whenever possible. This will save time and make your teams more efficient.

5. Operate Under Shared Metrics of Success

If marketing only values lead scores and MQL’s and sales only cares about closed-won opportunities, each team will undoubtedly define success by different standards, accentuating the separation between TOFU and BOFU. To cultivate a healthy partnership that encompasses the full sales funnel, it is critical that both teams align on one to two metrics that definitively stand as measures of success.

Let’s use parenthood as an analogy: each parent has a unique relationship with their child: differing day-to-day responsibilities, styles of communication, etc. These individual roles are important no doubt, but they’re judged as a unit, and only considered “good” parents by a handful of measures: the amount of time they devote to their child, and his/her health and happiness, for example. The exact same logic can be applied to how sales and marketing go about their roles: if the customer’s happiness isn’t the key metric of success for both teams, neither will be as successful as possible, and the overall health of the business will deteriorate. Unifying under a shared vision of what “success” really means assures that each team achieves it.

Conclusion

It may be grandiose to think that sales and marketing will ever have a completely flawless partnership. These two groups will always have different daily responsibilities and character traits that won’t always align in perfect harmony. But by adopting these practices into your organization’s strategy, the improvements in each team’s performance may be drastic. When you stop to think about it, sales and marketing are two sides of the same coin, and with the right attitudes and systems in place, they begin to look and act like a unified revenue machine.

  The post 5 Practical Ways to Strengthen Your Sales and Marketing Partnership appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8217493 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/modernb2bmarketing/~3/cNy6PSAzLqQ/5-practical-ways-to-strengthen-your-sales-and-marketing-partnership.html

[sualkmedeiors]

5 Practical Ways to Strengthen Your Sales and Marketing Partnership

Imagine a world where sales and marketing can actually work together and, in fact, help one another instead of stepping on each others’ toes. A world where roles are clearly defined and prospects enjoy a smooth traversal through the funnel. Never a gap, never a hang-up.

A boy can dream.

Creating a strong partnership between sales and marketing teams has plagued companies since…well, forever. There are a plethora of sticking points that make alignment of any kind a challenge in itself. To muddy the waters even more, organizations are frequently updating their systems and processes, which leads to miscommunication or even worse, no communication at all.

Often times, sales and marketing professionals actually think their jobs are harder because of their counterpart’s “incompetencies.” How many times have you heard sales reps complain about a lack of quality leads? How many marketers have you heard criticizing sales’ aptitude for squandering opportunities they worked so hard to provide? This pessimistic outlook not only makes for awkward company Christmas parties, but it also impacts the buyer journey and, ultimately, the bottom line.

It doesn’t have to be this way. A recent study found that a strong partnership between sales and marketing “results in 208% more value from marketing with 108% less friction.” There are real, practical steps that, when applied, not only keep sales and marketing off each others’ backs but help them work together to achieve their goals and engage with customers in a unified manner.

In this post, I will share five tactics that you can use today to ease the tension between your sales and marketing teams and deliver a joint effort towards driving revenue and winning opportunities.

1. Reward the Team That Wasn’t (Directly) Involved

It’s easy to praise marketing when there’s a success at the top of the funnel. The same goes for sales at the bottom of the funnel. But if each respective team can show their appreciation for their counterpart’s contribution, it reinforces the idea of a communal effort throughout the entire funnel. A little recognition can go a long way, so the next time a deal is closed, make sure the demand generation team gets a shoutout for properly scoring the lead in the first place. And marketers, before you get high and mighty for delivering quality SQL’s, don’t forget that sales works tirelessly to convert those and keep the organization’s engine running.

It sounds almost too simple to be true, but it’s important to remember that we’re human beings working with other human beings. We enjoy feeling valued and recognized for our hard work. Make a point of sharing the fruits of your labor with everyone who played a part, and you’ll be amazed at their willingness to help you be successful again down the road. You can’t move forward as a unified team if you don’t celebrate like one.

2. Keep the Customer at the Core of Your Efforts

As much as we’re talking about helping sales and marketing partner more effectively, that is NOT the end goal. The customer’s satisfaction must be the heartbeat behind whatever actions your teams decide to make. Focusing on what makes your prospect happy can alleviate some of the “us vs. them” tension that arises between sales and marketing. Use the customer’s satisfaction (or lack thereof) as your benchmark, and the partnership between your two teams will improve without having to think too hard about it. Though tempting to focus on quotas and campaign stats, your customers are best served by a joint effort between sales and marketing. When your focus shifts away from personal performance and towards that high-level goal, you’ll be amazed how well your organization will operate.

A joint goal of providing the best content, service, and personalization to pipeline efforts will lead to more collaboration and more open transparency between sales and marketing. Marketing will want to provide sales all the collateral they need because their focus isn’t on simply relaying leads to them, but making sure the lead is taken care of at every stage of their journey. Organizations who can keep customer satisfaction at the forefront of their efforts don’t even have to consider strengthening their sales and marketing partnership; it just happens. 

3. Understand When to Butt in—and When to Buzz Off 

The poor marketer, well-intentioned as she can be, frequently doesn’t know how to act once the lead has been handed off to the sales team. Can she continue to nurture, or will that mess up the flow the sales rep is building? Sales and marketing must reach an understanding—set boundaries on how much will each team engage the prospect, and make sure that each piece of content marketing sends fits into the context that sales has worked hard to create.

This gray area used to be known as “the handoff,” but these days it may be best defined as “mid-funnel” (or MOFU), as there is no longer a definitive moment where marketing walks away from the account and sales picks it up. Because of this, a well-orchestrated cadence of communication must be agreed upon in advance, so marketing knows when outreach will help the sales team, rather than detract from their efforts.

This involves a level of visibility that many companies currently lack. As it stands now, sales teams commonly live in their CRM platform, while marketing operates on their own platforms. Though these systems “talk” to one another, it doesn’t allow either team to easily see what actions the other has taken. As a salesperson, how can you be confident you’re providing your customer valuable and previously unseen information if you don’t know what content the marketing team has already sent them? Without having the ability to see the entirety of information that your prospect has been given, you run the risk of sounding redundant, or worse, impersonal.

4. Clearly Define the Roles of Marketing and Sales and How They Work Together

This goes far beyond simply saying “marketing does X, sales does Y.” Just as a doctor isn’t only a doctor, marketers aren’t just marketers, and salespeople aren’t just that either. To increase productivity (and show your colleagues respect), make sure your sales team is familiar with the different roles and responsibilities of the marketing team. Clearly define for them what demand generation, content marketing, product marketing, customer marketing, and marketing operations are responsible for, and what success looks like for them. Do the same for your marketing team. Make sure they’re up to speed on the ins and outs of the sales team and what responsibilities sales development representatives have, how you define commercial vs. enterprise, and the responsibilities of your account executives and customer success managers. Not only will their team appreciate your attempt to understand their roles and responsibilities, but you’ll save time by knowing exactly who to go to with an issue.

Make sure your cross-departmental processes and protocols include specifics —there should be a documented answer to questions like “who should I go to if I need to track down an ebook we published four years ago?” “When did sales last have a call with this prospect, and what should I send them next?” Set your teams up for success and avoid generalizations whenever possible. This will save time and make your teams more efficient.

5. Operate Under Shared Metrics of Success

If marketing only values lead scores and MQL’s and sales only cares about closed-won opportunities, each team will undoubtedly define success by different standards, accentuating the separation between TOFU and BOFU. To cultivate a healthy partnership that encompasses the full sales funnel, it is critical that both teams align on one to two metrics that definitively stand as measures of success.

Let’s use parenthood as an analogy: each parent has a unique relationship with their child: differing day-to-day responsibilities, styles of communication, etc. These individual roles are important no doubt, but they’re judged as a unit, and only considered “good” parents by a handful of measures: the amount of time they devote to their child, and his/her health and happiness, for example. The exact same logic can be applied to how sales and marketing go about their roles: if the customer’s happiness isn’t the key metric of success for both teams, neither will be as successful as possible, and the overall health of the business will deteriorate. Unifying under a shared vision of what “success” really means assures that each team achieves it.

Conclusion

It may be grandiose to think that sales and marketing will ever have a completely flawless partnership. These two groups will always have different daily responsibilities and character traits that won’t always align in perfect harmony. But by adopting these practices into your organization’s strategy, the improvements in each team’s performance may be drastic. When you stop to think about it, sales and marketing are two sides of the same coin, and with the right attitudes and systems in place, they begin to look and act like a unified revenue machine.

  The post 5 Practical Ways to Strengthen Your Sales and Marketing Partnership appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

from https://blog.marketo.com/2018/04/5-practical-ways-to-strengthen-your-sales-and-marketing-partnership.html

[racheltgibsau]

5 Practical Ways to Strengthen Your Sales and Marketing Partnership

Imagine a world where sales and marketing can actually work together and, in fact, help one another instead of stepping on each others’ toes. A world where roles are clearly defined and prospects enjoy a smooth traversal through the funnel. Never a gap, never a hang-up.

A boy can dream.

Creating a strong partnership between sales and marketing teams has plagued companies since…well, forever. There are a plethora of sticking points that make alignment of any kind a challenge in itself. To muddy the waters even more, organizations are frequently updating their systems and processes, which leads to miscommunication or even worse, no communication at all.

Often times, sales and marketing professionals actually think their jobs are harder because of their counterpart’s “incompetencies.” How many times have you heard sales reps complain about a lack of quality leads? How many marketers have you heard criticizing sales’ aptitude for squandering opportunities they worked so hard to provide? This pessimistic outlook not only makes for awkward company Christmas parties, but it also impacts the buyer journey and, ultimately, the bottom line.

It doesn’t have to be this way. A recent study found that a strong partnership between sales and marketing “results in 208% more value from marketing with 108% less friction.” There are real, practical steps that, when applied, not only keep sales and marketing off each others’ backs but help them work together to achieve their goals and engage with customers in a unified manner.

In this post, I will share five tactics that you can use today to ease the tension between your sales and marketing teams and deliver a joint effort towards driving revenue and winning opportunities.

1. Reward the Team That Wasn’t (Directly) Involved

It’s easy to praise marketing when there’s a success at the top of the funnel. The same goes for sales at the bottom of the funnel. But if each respective team can show their appreciation for their counterpart’s contribution, it reinforces the idea of a communal effort throughout the entire funnel. A little recognition can go a long way, so the next time a deal is closed, make sure the demand generation team gets a shoutout for properly scoring the lead in the first place. And marketers, before you get high and mighty for delivering quality SQL’s, don’t forget that sales works tirelessly to convert those and keep the organization’s engine running.

It sounds almost too simple to be true, but it’s important to remember that we’re human beings working with other human beings. We enjoy feeling valued and recognized for our hard work. Make a point of sharing the fruits of your labor with everyone who played a part, and you’ll be amazed at their willingness to help you be successful again down the road. You can’t move forward as a unified team if you don’t celebrate like one.

2. Keep the Customer at the Core of Your Efforts

As much as we’re talking about helping sales and marketing partner more effectively, that is NOT the end goal. The customer’s satisfaction must be the heartbeat behind whatever actions your teams decide to make. Focusing on what makes your prospect happy can alleviate some of the “us vs. them” tension that arises between sales and marketing. Use the customer’s satisfaction (or lack thereof) as your benchmark, and the partnership between your two teams will improve without having to think too hard about it. Though tempting to focus on quotas and campaign stats, your customers are best served by a joint effort between sales and marketing. When your focus shifts away from personal performance and towards that high-level goal, you’ll be amazed how well your organization will operate.

A joint goal of providing the best content, service, and personalization to pipeline efforts will lead to more collaboration and more open transparency between sales and marketing. Marketing will want to provide sales all the collateral they need because their focus isn’t on simply relaying leads to them, but making sure the lead is taken care of at every stage of their journey. Organizations who can keep customer satisfaction at the forefront of their efforts don’t even have to consider strengthening their sales and marketing partnership; it just happens. 

3. Understand When to Butt in—and When to Buzz Off 

The poor marketer, well-intentioned as she can be, frequently doesn’t know how to act once the lead has been handed off to the sales team. Can she continue to nurture, or will that mess up the flow the sales rep is building? Sales and marketing must reach an understanding—set boundaries on how much will each team engage the prospect, and make sure that each piece of content marketing sends fits into the context that sales has worked hard to create.

This gray area used to be known as “the handoff,” but these days it may be best defined as “mid-funnel” (or MOFU), as there is no longer a definitive moment where marketing walks away from the account and sales picks it up. Because of this, a well-orchestrated cadence of communication must be agreed upon in advance, so marketing knows when outreach will help the sales team, rather than detract from their efforts.

This involves a level of visibility that many companies currently lack. As it stands now, sales teams commonly live in their CRM platform, while marketing operates on their own platforms. Though these systems “talk” to one another, it doesn’t allow either team to easily see what actions the other has taken. As a salesperson, how can you be confident you’re providing your customer valuable and previously unseen information if you don’t know what content the marketing team has already sent them? Without having the ability to see the entirety of information that your prospect has been given, you run the risk of sounding redundant, or worse, impersonal.

4. Clearly Define the Roles of Marketing and Sales and How They Work Together

This goes far beyond simply saying “marketing does X, sales does Y.” Just as a doctor isn’t only a doctor, marketers aren’t just marketers, and salespeople aren’t just that either. To increase productivity (and show your colleagues respect), make sure your sales team is familiar with the different roles and responsibilities of the marketing team. Clearly define for them what demand generation, content marketing, product marketing, customer marketing, and marketing operations are responsible for, and what success looks like for them. Do the same for your marketing team. Make sure they’re up to speed on the ins and outs of the sales team and what responsibilities sales development representatives have, how you define commercial vs. enterprise, and the responsibilities of your account executives and customer success managers. Not only will their team appreciate your attempt to understand their roles and responsibilities, but you’ll save time by knowing exactly who to go to with an issue.

Make sure your cross-departmental processes and protocols include specifics —there should be a documented answer to questions like “who should I go to if I need to track down an ebook we published four years ago?” “When did sales last have a call with this prospect, and what should I send them next?” Set your teams up for success and avoid generalizations whenever possible. This will save time and make your teams more efficient.

5. Operate Under Shared Metrics of Success

If marketing only values lead scores and MQL’s and sales only cares about closed-won opportunities, each team will undoubtedly define success by different standards, accentuating the separation between TOFU and BOFU. To cultivate a healthy partnership that encompasses the full sales funnel, it is critical that both teams align on one to two metrics that definitively stand as measures of success.

Let’s use parenthood as an analogy: each parent has a unique relationship with their child: differing day-to-day responsibilities, styles of communication, etc. These individual roles are important no doubt, but they’re judged as a unit, and only considered “good” parents by a handful of measures: the amount of time they devote to their child, and his/her health and happiness, for example. The exact same logic can be applied to how sales and marketing go about their roles: if the customer’s happiness isn’t the key metric of success for both teams, neither will be as successful as possible, and the overall health of the business will deteriorate. Unifying under a shared vision of what “success” really means assures that each team achieves it.

Conclusion

It may be grandiose to think that sales and marketing will ever have a completely flawless partnership. These two groups will always have different daily responsibilities and character traits that won’t always align in perfect harmony. But by adopting these practices into your organization’s strategy, the improvements in each team’s performance may be drastic. When you stop to think about it, sales and marketing are two sides of the same coin, and with the right attitudes and systems in place, they begin to look and act like a unified revenue machine.

  The post 5 Practical Ways to Strengthen Your Sales and Marketing Partnership appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8217493 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/modernb2bmarketing/~3/cNy6PSAzLqQ/5-practical-ways-to-strengthen-your-sales-and-marketing-partnership.html