Working Hand in Hand, or Cog in Cog
When you think about marketing departments and business development, you normally think about them being totally separate and sitting at opposite ends of the room. On one end you have the creative, idea people who like throwing balls around the office and call it brainstorming. And at the other end are the group of individuals who figure out the logistics of all these brainstorming sessions and build relationships with clients. You don’t exactly see them working together in perfect harmony singing kumbaya. But if you think about it harder and forget normal office conventions, those two departments working together makes complete sense. One has the information and knowledge to help the other and vice versa. And one can’t survive without the other.
It could be visualised as a cycle, business development managers receive input from the client on what they want, and marketing creates the output of what the client needs. Members of the sales or account management teams meet the clients, build relationships and know everything about industry trends and pain points. And marketers have to create content which appeals to these clients. If all this information was circulated between both departments, it would make both more fruitful and would bring in more business for everyone.
In a Bloom Group survey, it demonstrated that when business developers and marketers work together and thrive from this, it creates more viable leads. Of which a greater percentage turns into actual work, faster than if they had worked separately. Like the saying goes: teamwork makes the dream work!
There seems to be two options to tackle this divide; create a new role, combining marketing and business developers/sales. Or to put structures and team-building initiatives in place to form closer working relationships.
Surely, as you all work for the same company, and abide under the same company values and way of doing things, the ethos should be to do what you can to support your colleagues and grow the business. In mostly all stats you can find, firms, where departments were coordinated, generated more leads and converted them down the sales funnel more efficiently, than those with disruption and discourse amongst the workers.
It is often an effective recipe to have both teams working on the same project at the same time, then they are both speaking the same language and are on the same wavelength.
Additionally, before work even starts, talking through and putting in place a concrete strategy for the project will help everyone be more focused and understand exactly what they and the other side is doing and how it all correlates together. Another tip is for the business developers to tell the marketing team what materials they actually want, and think will be effective and connect with their audience the most.
Another circle analogy for you, in order to maintain and reap the rewards of a really sensational collaboration, the marketers have to come up with the campaigns and promote them, but the business developers have to reach out to their clients and target audiences to follow up and convert them. Like a cog system, when one is on its own or two are far apart, nothing is achieved. But when put together they make the whole system flow effortlessly.
The more departments understand each other and the jobs they actually do, and not just what they think they do, the more they can help each other out and be stronger. So, taking the time to have meetings to solidify your inter-office relationships is vital.
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