How to avoid misalignment on the Ideal Customer Profile

Are you a marketeer, and does it frustrate you that sales aren’t following up on the leads? Or are you a salesperson and frustrated that marketing keeps sending through this large amount of unqualified leads that take a lot of your time to follow up?

And what about the lead? How would you feel being told you wasted your time on the wrong solution after being spammed with ads and emails almost every day? We all know these kinds of frustrations. But do you also know the leading cause of them?

Misalignment related to Ideal Customer Profile

Of course, every case is different, but this mainly considers a misalignment between your marketing and sales teams regarding the ideal customer profile.

Why is this a bad thing? Next to the frustrations, your marketing and sales team are inefficiently investing time and budget on leads that are a misfit and most likely will never buy your product or service or become unsatisfied customers.

How to align your teams on this matter?

1. Break the silos

One team – one mission – one primary goal – focus on the same target group(s).

Your sales and marketing teams, and preferably all teams within a company, should work towards one mission that we want to achieve together by striving towards one main goal. The teams should focus on the same target group(s) to reach this main goal efficiently.

Therefore, do the exercise of defining your ideal customer profile together, and redo it often. And always double-check that everyone is on the same page to avoid further miscommunications.

2. Collaborate closely and communicate transparently

To your customers, it doesn’t matter whether they are talking to marketing or sales. They want a solution for their problem or a good experience. Mostly marketing will be in touch with the customer in the first stages of the buyer journey. In B2B, this can even be different people (the influencer, the user, the sponsor, etc).

At a certain point, the customer is aware, has been educated, is convinced and thinking about making a purchase. Now the sales team comes in. For the potential customer, it is very annoying when they need to re-share their information. This causes a bad experience and can even make them reconsider the purchase.

Therefore, it is essential to work together closely and maintain transparent internal communication:

• Log and share important information consistently in one place, like a CRM or other collaboration tools. And in a GDPR compliant way, please.
• Define the triggers/actions done by the marketing & sales team together. So you are aware which steps the potential customer has already been through and what information you should still share with them.
• Define together when a marketing lead becomes a sales lead to hand over the potential customer at the right moment. You can even implement a lead scoring system together.
• Reconsider the content and triggers/actions regularly together. Marketing data and smarketing conversations with the customer can bring new insights on how to get the attention of or address the potential customers during their buyer journey.

Conclusion

All these actions not only bring you an aligned, happier and more efficient team but also more satisfied and loyal customers.