Everyone and everything has become more connected — the internet connects us with content from all over the world, companies are connected in the age of social distancing through video conferencing, social media connects us with people near and far. It’s critical to connect during these times of integrated digitisation, personally and professionally.
However, on the professional side of things, a crucial chasm remains — a corporate knowledge management gap between sales and marketing teams. Both teams ultimately work towards the same goal: increase sales. But marketing will often conceptualise campaigns or make pricing decisions without discussing it with sales. And sales teams often create their own content and merchandising schemes to attract customers.
These two essential growth engines are too often unsynchronised. Independently, they will still find forward momentum, but working in tandem is when organisations will surely see revenue flourish.
Many brand manufacturers discover their sales and marketing teams lack the necessary tools, communication, and processes required to collaborate.
Imagine a way to bridge that gap, uniting these powerful teams to work together to increase reach and influence.
Break the Silos with PXM
A recent study found that only 26% of sales and marketing professionals would describe their teams as being tightly aligned.“When sales and marketing align, revenue increases, the sales cycle shortens, and conversion rates improve along with forecast accuracy” writes Mike Lieberman for Marketo.
The Heads of Marketing, Revenue, and Growth must work together to combine their teams to create one efficient unit. For the world of commerce, the answer lies within product experience management (PXM).
PXM includes a growing list of capabilities, including product information management (PIM), syndication, enhanced content, analytics insights, and more to deliver winning experiences across shopping platforms.
PXM enables teams to create product content experiences that tell a cohesive brand story to drive engagement and conversion.
The Modern Shopping Journey Takes Many Turns
Today’s consumers have a variety of channels within their shopping journeys. One shopper may ask Amazon’s cloud-based Alexa to add a book that she heard about on a podcast to her Amazon wishlist. Another may purchase a chic jacket from an Instagram ad. A third will download an app to build a grocery list which she’ll order on a different app.
Consequently, brands must now create a cohesive experience across the full range of available shopping channels.
The future of any commerce strategy must revolve around a single, interconnected digital shelf, and PXM enables brands the flexibility, speed, and agility necessary to meet their customers in any channel of their preference and at any point of their shopping journey.
PXM Helps Teams Collaborate More Efficiently, Saving Time
PXM creates a single source of truth for product data and this content can be delivered to every channel and can be continually optimised to fit the ever-evolving requirements of each individual channel or retailer.Whether it’s a third-party retailer website, a marketplace, a distributor, or your own social media profiles or direct to consumer (D2C) pages, PXM creates adaptable teams for the frequently shifting customer journey.
PXM enables teams to manage workflow, activate across channels, engage consumers, and optimise using analytics. By enabling teams to automate tasks across every department, PXM helps teams communicate more efficiently and save everyone time — an increasingly important benefit in fast-changing times.
Every relevant team can access this content and data, which helps ensure that data meets internal standards and channel specifications. In turn, this provides a smooth and consistent product experience for shoppers, no matter which digital channel or retailer they arrive at.
Leveraging the power of PXM brings sales and marketing closer together. The single source of truth gets everyone in sync, accessing the same data, and collaborating to make the best possible experience to create leads and win sales.
These comprehensive insights and collaborative environments push sales and marketing teams towards optimised performance at every level. PXM enables brands to deliver outstanding, seamless customer experiences, wherever shoppers are in their journey.
Bridge the Gap between Sales and Marketing Collaboration
PXM can’t be the only tactic deployed to bring these critical teams together. Once PXM is deployed, teams should then turn to other factors and tactics to support collaboration.
Pro-tips for sales and marketing collaboration:
- Take a holistic approach to your funnel. A lead is a lead where it came from. Align strategies and integrate people, processes, and controls.
- Make sure each department knows their role — and is held accountable with robust metrics.
- Clearly define the coworking environment by bringing teams together for regular meetings to develop and foster goals and get aligned.
- Share knowledge, successes, and encourage empathy between these two teams. Get them together in the same room (physical or virtual) daily.
- Learn about the daily tasks and responsibilities of someone from the opposite team for a day. If marketing is about knowing your audience, it’s sales’ direct link to those customers.
Sharing a cross-functional strategy and KPIs can help align teams behind the big picture. But only by leveraging software like PXM and ensuring all are working together towards a common goal for the digital shelf, can brands truly enhance their customer experience and bridge the gap between marketing and sales.
