Sales and marketing — it’s not uncommon to hear them either lumped together or, contrastingly, positioned as mortal enemies.

In reality, neither is an accurate representation.

While sales and marketing are not synonymous and definitely have more differences than they do similarities, they do share the same goal: growing business.

Let’s think of sales and marketing as a fun duo who, when they collaborate, can bring out the best in one another. Sherlock and Watson? Salt and pepper? Gin and tonic? Always better together.

Let’s take a look at some of the key ways that sales and marketing can complement one another.

How sales can level up your marketing

Gain insights into your audience: Data on your target market is more powerful than ever thanks to this crazy digital world we live in. But let’s not discount the invaluable wealth of knowledge held by the people who are face to face with your customer base on the daily. Gain in-depth detail about your audience’s challenges, desires and obstacles in the sales process and use this to enhance marketing strategies.

Discover marketing feedback: Again, there’s only so much reporting can tell us. That includes information about how your marketing is being received. But your sales team can fill in the gaps. When the sales team passes on feedback from customers about their experience of your business’s marketing, you get the opportunity to do better and be better.

How marketing can enhance sales

Forget cold calls: Cold calls are far from ideal, whether you’re making them or receiving them. However, with strong insights about sales prospects, marketing can create a targeted campaign to ready leads and make those cold calls significantly less chilly.

Warm up those leads: When a lead isn’t quite ready, sales will often back off and leave it be for a while. In the interim, marketing can jump in and nurture those leads so that they don’t get swept away by your competitors. This is a great way area for marketing and sales to get together and create a highly targeted campaign designed to prevent leads from slipping away and make conversion easier when the time comes.

Bringing sales and marketing together

Both marketing and sales are vital to every business in their own right. If you can get these two key players in your business working together more effectively, you could expect some impressive results. In fact, according to this article, you could be looking at 208% increase in marketing revenue and 36% better customer retention.

Getting sales and marketing aligned is fairly straightforward. Here are a few quick tips to get things moving in the right direction:

• Put them on the same page: Literally. Put together a spreadsheet or similar that highlights shared goals that are relevant to both sales and marketing. Number of leads, brand reach, profits — create a space for common ground.

• Schedule regular meetings: Speaking of common ground, a regular meeting where sales and marketing can come together to review progress and share their insights and ideas.

• Collaborate on buyer personas: Make the time for sales and marketing to work together on buyer personas with regular reviewing of them. This ensures that both teams are always targeting their efforts in the same direction.

We love watching the magic happen when we bring gin and tonic together. I mean sales and marketing — we love watching the magic happen when we bring sales and marketing together. If you need a little guidance on leveraging this partnership more effectively, let’s chat.