How Sales and Marketing Work Together to Increase Sales

 Lisa Shepherd, was recently interviewed by Salesforce.com about her latest book, The Radical Sales Shift. The interview covered a lot of territory so we are going to go over some of the key topics discussed. The main focus of the interview was on how sales and marketing must work together in B2B companies in order to increase sales, and the growing role that technology has in B2B sales. 

 Here are the key points: 

• Sales is much different today than in the past because the buying process has evolved dramatically. It will be even more different in the future. Buyers are more empowered and savvy these days; they do the legwork and research before they want to talk to a salesperson, which makes it difficult for traditional sales people to get opportunities to work with clients. 

• This is where marketing comes in. Once companies start thinking about how they can make use of digital marketing strategies, they start taking advantage of all the technologies available to help them reach those elusive buyers, when they are in buying mode.  

• While we can't predict the future of digital technology, we can see how much more complex and integrated everything will be in the next ten years. This means B2B companies can’t rely on one tool to help increase sales, but rather, we will need a host of apps, tech, and tricks to help persuade buyers to let us in the door.

• Companies who don’t adapt won't survive. All B2B companies need to embrace this new world and work within it. By working together, both sales and marketing can ensure the company can continue to grow. 

• In the future, sales and marketing may not even be separate functions; rather, they will function as a single, revenue-generating unit. Indeed, this is already in practice in some large corporations today and has helped many of them increase sales and earnings. The growth of the title ‘Chief Revenue Officer’ is a good indicator of this trend.  We will see dramatically more people with this title in 5 years. 

• Revenue generation is a long-term process for B2B companies. Rather than looking at things three months down the road, companies instead should be thinking two to five years ahead.

We hope you were able to gain some insights about the future of sales and marketing.  

To read the original interview, you can find the article here.  And if you haven’t yet, you can get the first section of Lisa's book, The Radical Sales Shift, here.