A revenue team meets weekly and is made up of key players from your sales and marketing teams. All activities, regardless of individual roles, will be focused on the shared goal of increasing company revenue. This team will develop and execute a strategy of content to be used in the sales process to accelerate the sales cycle based on the most pressing questions of your ideal buyers.
Truth be told, when I first graduated with my degree in engineering, I would have never thought I would end up in sales.
I had an image of working in sales that many do: that it was ruthlessly focused on closing deals, making money by lying, cheating, stealing, any means necessary.
But after nearly a decade-long career, I've learned how dated and inaccurate that perception is, especially in the world of inbound marketing and sales.
Modern sales professionals — at least the most effective — are more focused on educating and guiding than selling. They are about helping customers to make the best decisions for themselves, not bamboozling them into buying something they don't need.
This is much more aligned with the work of marketers than it once was, and frankly, it needs to be in order for a modern business to succeed.
You see, when you look at the numbers, the case for fostering sales and marketing alignment in a company speaks for itself.
The Revenue Marketing Report 2022 found that small-to-medium-sized businesses (SMBs) "that struggle with disjointed marketing and sales teams are twice as likely to miss revenue goals, while those with great alignment more commonly exceed them."
Even more striking, the same report found 58% of sales and marketing professionals don’t feel well aligned, a significant increase from 46% just last year.
Working with hundreds of organizations across the world, we've found that one of the best ways to align marketing and sales is to establish what we call a revenue team.
It’s estimated that 70% of the buying decision happens in the research phase, before a prospect even dreams of reaching out to someone in sales. In fact, 88% of all buyers are doing online research before they make a purchase of any kind.
In other words, marketing lays the foundation for sales to build upon.
Sales needs to inform marketing of what customers are looking for. Marketing then needs to create the right content and experience around this information. Then, sales needs to close the leads marketing delivers based on this.
This dependence is why the two departments need to work together.
Giving revenue growth responsibility to the sales team alone doesn’t make sense. By the time prospects have gotten in touch with them, the majority of the decision has already been made.
Similarly, marketing can't hold full responsibility because if they don't know what works for the sales team, the content and experiences they create will just be educated guesses.
With the way modern buyers make purchases, operating in silos is no longer an option for sales and marketing.
But how do you actually align sales and marketing?
Tactically speaking, a revenue team is a group of key players from your sales and marketing teams that collaborate around the shared goal of increasing revenue through traffic, leads, and sales.
Stakeholders will still focus on their designated activities. Yes, some people in the team will be more focused on marketing efforts (e.g. creating content) or sales efforts (e.g. closing deals). But the team acts as one, identifying and working towards their common goal.
That won’t change when you join the revenue team. Instead, your role within the revenue team and the conversations that come out of it (more on that shortly), will strongly influence how you do your job.
The revenue team primarily focuses on content creation and strategy. This includes weekly meetings so:
Overall, instead of two competing teams with independent priorities, the members of this singular unit work together to achieve their mutual goal of revenue growth through true collaboration, information-sharing, brainstorming, and problem-solving.
The success of a revenue team leads to a number of benefits. Let's break them down and what they look like at an organization:
The revenue team meeting is the foundation of your group's collaboration and, honestly, it's where the magic happens.
Its success relies on six key things:
Overall, the revenue team is an essential piece in finding success with inbound marketing and sales and this article just scratches the surface on it.
Talk to an expert to learn where to start