Aligning your sales and marketing teams can be challenging. Sometimes they're like oil and water, but why? Because they often work on a particular task and forget that they have a common goal.

Sales focus on convincing potential customers into purchasing the company's services or products, while marketing's main priority is to provide customers with high-quality content and increase user experience. But if you look more closely at the situation, you'll find out that they revolve around the same objective: to lead the business to success. That being said, you need to remind them that they're one and the same team, and one way to do that is to spark more effective communication between them.

If you don't know how to improve collaboration between sales and marketing teams, explore these valuable tips that will help the two departments work more efficiently together:

Meet frequently

One of the most common reasons for poor communication between the two teams is that they don't meet very often. So, they don't get to know each other. That's why it's highly recommended to schedule meetings weekly to discuss possible issues and challenges from the past week. Sure, independent work is excellent, but you should encourage teamwork to achieve success quickly and effectively.

Casual meetings encourage a healthy sales-marketing relationship because the two teams can share ideas, brainstorm, and solve any upcoming issue. It's essential to bring the two teams together because their activities are closely linked, which means that one can affect the progress of the other. Maybe your team members don't understand this fact yet, so don't hesitate to make them aware of it.

It's also imperative to give them a sense of recognition by constantly pointing out each team's strengths to understand that they can successfully handle any task.

Set common goals

It would be best not to take it for granted that your sales and marketing teams share the same goal. Marketers can sometimes get lost in creating valuable content for the clients to get recognized by other colleagues (and there's nothing wrong with that). But this way, they lose sight of the general objective of the company, which is to increase sales. So, don't be afraid to have an open discussion about all these facts in a casual meeting and explain to everyone what the company's priorities are.

To avoid any confusion, make yourself clear even from the beginning and, if necessary, repeat your business's overall goal every meeting. If your teams' goal is winning awards is totally fine - make sure they understand that working together increases the chances of success in the company, hence the profits.

Share results and feedback across all departments

Your employees should feel that they're treated fairly and equally. This way, there will be no corner discussions or hard-to-resolve conflicts. If you're wondering how to keep the spirit of transparency, you can share with everyone the same reports and data in a regular meeting. Give them feedback and try to maintain a positive attitude by showing how grateful you're for their work. This way, you'll give them a sense of value and fill them with the ambition to put more effort into what they do.

You also have to ensure that all your employees have access to the same information. Luckily, team collaboration software packages can simplify your job, allowing you to set goals and deadlines and monitor your employees' performance without being forced to tell each one what their duties are. Don't forget that transparency is key to every company's success.

Encourage the use of PDF

It's essential to convert your documents to PDF when sending them to your team so that they see the same format as you. Maybe they use different devices that don't allow them to open some formats like Word, but that's the advantage of PDF. As in any marketing company, you have to keep in touch with all the members, and sometimes face-to-face meetings are not enough to show them some data or statistics. Plus, you can sign a PDF file whenever necessary and avoid the hassle of printing every important document you receive. You can use PDFChef, for example, to convert your files so that your data communication to your employees will go smoother.

Emphasize quality over quantity

More often than not, employees focus on quantity instead of quality. And it's perfectly normal to want to be more productive and efficient, but sometimes you have to take it easy. Teach your salespeople and marketers how important it is to deliver high-quality content to boost sales instead of dozens of irrelevant advertisements.

In email campaigns, for example, the marketing team tends to go a little too far and exasperate the potential customers with email after email, day after day. We all know they have good intentions, but this can be not very pleasant for customers, so it's not excluded to unsubscribe from your emails. Thus, make sure you highlight the importance of "less is more" whenever you have the occasion.

Develop customer personas

Now that your marketing and sales teams have better collaboration, it's time to engage them in a common project to show how vital teamwork is. Developing buyer personas is a good start to unite the two sectors. Even if creating data-driven customer personas seems to be the marketers' job, salespeople can offer them useful information regarding the customers' preferences, given that they have direct contact with them. So, if data analytics fails to attract clients, the salespeople's insights may be of great help. 

Suppose your marketers don't manage to collect relevant information regarding the customers' habits, preferences, and needs, the sales team will directly ask them about their likes and dislikes and come up with valuable insights. You know the saying: brilliant minds think alike, so don't hesitate to combine the two departments' efforts to increase user engagement.

The bottom line

Sparking effective communication between marketers and salespeople has never been easier. You no longer have to worry about their relationship because we came up with some helpful recommendations to make them work efficiently together and have common goals. Your business's success is guaranteed if you consider these simple yet amazing tips.