Can Sales and Marketing Integration Save Time?

What is the one thing everyone always wishes they had more of? Money? Friends? Cars? Houses?

What is the one thing that is stopping you from doing everything (or anything) the internet marketing, inbound agency, social media gurus, and mobile marketing experts tell you?

It's time. I hate to admit it, but the older I get, the more I enlightened I am to the priceless value of time. It is also the one complaint I hear from prospects, they never seem to have enough of it.

I have always told audiences, prospects and clients that their level of success with online sales and marketing is made up 2 very basic things. Time and money. But here is one important factor; one is not exclusive of the other. Spending the money does not exclude you from investing the time. Time is money. 

How do you calculate the amount of time needed to succeed with inbound marketing?

It depends on the skill level of your team (which can be tested and assessed for how trainable they are), the amount of traffic you need to get found by, the type of leads you must get, and how many of those you must close. 

It also depends on how much time you have. Whether you are a small business owner, CEO, or sales and marketing professional, you are being pulled in many directions. How and where you decide to spend your time is tied directly into your personal and business goals. 

How to Turn Back Time with Internet and Inbound Marketing

A fellow internet marketing consultant commented in a recent lead generation debate that;

"sales and marketing should be two parts of the same team".

The first image that came to mind was a horse drawn carriage, two teams running side by side. It used to be that if you wanted to go faster, you added horses to the team to get more "horse-power". They had to work together in order to get anywhere. It would do no good to have one horse going this way, and the other going that way of course! The lead generation debate was focused on whether or not to do more inbound marketing, or hire a sales person. For many companies, they have to choose which horse to add to the team. Many of my colleagues have arguments one side over the other.

Consider this; Why would you hire a horse in the first place when you could hire a hybrid sales and marketing engine? Why would you choose to take the time, energy and resources to run a separate sales process and marketing process? Why waste time (and money!) on a separate sales strategy and a separate marketing strategy? Why would you duplicate the same inefficient efforts when the only process and strategy that matters is the customer's? (Remember the Golden Rule; he who has the gold makes the rules.)

Sales and marketing do not have the time to be two separate parts anymore. Most businesses do not have time to wait for ROI of inbound marketing to hit in 3, 6 or 9 months. They need sales now. 

How much time would you save if your sales people could effectively blog and use social media? How much time would your team save if sales and marketing were using the same process, the same metrics and the same approach with prospects? How much money are you leaving on the table by just adding another horse to the team? How much more money do you save, and make, with a hybrid sales and marketing engine that knows when to do what?

Integrate your sales and marketing processes to align with your target customer's buying process. It makes no sense to use the fuel and the time to run two engines in the same race.