Live Chat: The New Synergy Between Sales and Marketing

For many companies, there's at least some sort of disconnect or gap between the marketing team and the sales team's expectations of one another. If you're experiencing this friction, this article will show you how to use live chat to bridge the gap.

Sales and Marketing Synergy Through Live Chat

Sales and marketing– it's the age-old tug of war. Both sides are passionate about what they do and challenge the other to rise to the occasion. Marketing is doing all they can to bring in potential leads, and sales are doing all they can to turn them into customers.

Using live chat in the right way can create a powerful bridge to connect your sales and marketing team, allowing them to work smoothly, synergistically, and more profitably than ever. Here's how.

Is There a Disconnect Between Sales + Marketing?

Firstly, let's address the elephant in the room: most sales and marketing teams have at least a little bit of friction between one another. But where there's friction, there are sparks. It usually means they're both making things happen. 

This isn't always a bad thing as it can act as a sound system of professional checks and balances– but when the gap grows too large, it can be severely detrimental for both sides. It can harm productivity, lower morale, and even hurt revenues. 

It's important to remember that marketing and sales each have a different approach, a unique skill set, and method of getting the job done. With a common goal of delivering revenue for the business, each function plays a vital role - but often, one department's success is dependent on the other. 

In many companies, each team– sales and marketing– works in silos, laser-focused on their own goals. 

When this occurs, it can be easy for each team to get comfortable and not challenge the status quo. And when you're not challenging the status quo, things can get stale or even decline.

Do any of these sticking points resonate with you?

Sales vs. Marketing - The Challenges

In sales and marketing, both teams are putting forth their best efforts to do a great job– but depending on which side you're on, there can be challenges seeing it from the other team's perspective.

Sales

If you're in sales, you've likely gotten a list of leads from the marketing department. Whether it's from webinar sign-ups, social media, or paid ad campaigns– in their mind, they are handing you 30 brand-new leads to follow up with. 

The issue with this is that of the 30 leads handed to you, several were just a little curious but not in the market. Others were interested in the content but did not have the right buyer personas. Some were maybe even competitors who were doing some research and checking up on you. 

Indeed, there will be some solid prospects in the list as well– they won't all be bad– but here's where a challenge often arises. Of the 30 "leads" you were handed, only 5 truly marketing-qualified leads (MQLs) were actual prospects you had a true opportunity to sell to. 

So marketing is upset that you're "burning through leads," and you're upset that you're wasting your time while you could be prospecting new and more qualified leads.

Marketing

If you're in marketing, you're working hard to generate as many qualified leads as possible for the sales team using various channels. And any marketer working today knows how saturated the market has become. You're constantly trying to think outside the box to cut above the noise and capture the attention of as many prospects as possible. 

So, in addition to some marketing staples such as paid ads, social media, and email blasts, you're trying to develop new ways to get leads. This includes driving new kinds of traffic directly to your website, coming up with new downloads such as eBooks and case studies, and creating online content such as webinars and podcasts. 

You also use data to decide what actions should be taken, so once you generate a good number of leads and hear sales feedback that they aren't the best, that's where there's discontent.

As a marketer, you're constantly pouring over data and using those insights to decide precisely what marketing actions should be taken. Your marketing efforts take time, thought, and energy to do properly, so it can be disheartening when you hear that the sales team isn't closing the leads. 

It can be frustrating to hear feedback from the sales team that the 30 leads you generated "were not good,"-- and to make matters worse, it can be disappointing to learn that some folks on the sales team aren't following up with every lead they're given.

How Do You Bridge the Sales + Marketing Gap? Live Chat.

The qualification of leads is key, but if your sales team is spending time qualifying their leads, it's taking away from their prospecting and selling time. 

If your marketing team spends less effort granularly qualifying every lead, time can be recovered in the back and forth with the prospect. We know that within any sales cycle, timing is key, and every minute counts. 

Here is how live chat can bridge the gap and create a seamless synergy between your sales and marketing departments. 

1. Marketing can focus on driving the right traffic to the site via paid ads, online events, and doubling down on content and SEO efforts.
2. Live chat focuses on qualifying this traffic by starting a conversation with the prospect and uncovering their needs. This method gets that lead to a point where we have enough buying signals that they're ready to be converted into a true marketing-qualified lead (MQL).
3. All lead details and buying insights are passed directly into their CRM system based on the information gathered during the live chat conversation. This allows the sales team to review and use the information in their prospecting and follow-up.
4. The salespeople can use these buyer insights to take the MQL and turn it into an SQL– a sales-qualified lead. The salespeople can enter their meetings confidently, focused on closing the sale.

Do you see how much smoother that is? Each team can now focus on being great at their job and have the tools necessary, thanks to live chat. 

Are you looking to unpack this in more detail? If so, we've got you covered with our short guide on Converting with Conversational Marketing, which you can get at no cost here.

Are You Ready to Bridge the Gap?

We'd love to talk if any of the points we raised in this article sound familiar. If you're looking to truly set your sales and marketing teams up for success, we can help. 

Feel free to share this article with your head of marketing and director of sales– It's very likely it will resonate with them, and we're confident they'll at least find it intriguing. 

Let's arrange a call with you, your head of marketing, and your director of sales to brainstorm how we can generate more marketing-qualified leads so your sales team can close more deals.