Insights — Sales Strategy — 3 min read
How Sales and Marketing Should Work Together in an SME
In an SME these are not two departments. They are two halves of one commercial process, usually managed as though they were unrelated.
Marketing reports reach. Sales reports orders. Between them sits the enquiry, which both claim when it works and disown when it does not.
Agree what a qualified lead is, in writing
Sector, size, geography, budget range, timescale. One page. Without it, marketing optimises for volume and sales dismisses the output, and both are behaving rationally.
Set one shared number
Qualified opportunities created per month is the natural handover metric — marketing is accountable for producing them, sales for converting them, and both can see the same figure. Traffic and impressions are diagnostics beneath it.
Close the loop every month
- 01Every enquiry is marked qualified or not, with a reason.
- 02Every qualified enquiry is tracked through to quote and order.
- 03The result is reviewed together, monthly, against source.
- 04Spend and messaging change based on what that review shows.
Let sales inform the message
The people on the phone know the objections, the language buyers use and the reasons deals are lost. That is the raw material for ad copy, landing pages and collateral — and it is usually collected from nobody.
Let marketing hold sales to the follow-up
If enquiries are being generated and not contacted for two days, that is a commercial failure regardless of which side of the line it falls on. Shared reporting makes it visible rather than contested.
Think your sales operation could be performing better?
A Sales Growth Assessment finds where revenue is being lost before anything gets changed.