The senior living industry is highly competitive, with many communities vying for the attention of older adults and their families. Due to this high-stakes environment, the synergy between sales and marketing is not just important—it’s essential. Encouraging collaboration drives organizational success and ensures seniors and their families receive consistent, clear and compelling messages, ultimately enhancing their overall sales experience.
By creating a culture of collaboration, not only will sales and marketing thrive, but it may also influence other departments to work together to enhance marketing efforts and achieve better organizational outcomes.
Set your team up for success:
1. Establish Clear Goals and Objectives for the Organization
The first step in fostering a productive relationship between sales and marketing is to set and align their goals. Both teams should strive for measurable outcomes, such as a specific number of new leads, brochure downloads, community visits and new residents. To enhance collaboration:
- Make sure both teams understand the overall marketing plan and what it entails.
- Document tactics and messaging.
- Clearly articulate how the plan relates to the organization’s goals.
2. Foster Open Communication Between Departments
Regular communication between sales and marketing teams is crucial. Hold joint meetings to discuss strategies, share insights and review progress to ensure both teams are on the same page and can quickly address any issues that arise.
Use benchmarks for comparison and qualitative assessment. For example, if leads are from the wrong target audience or if there are too many leads that aren’t converting, the teams can work together to change strategies.
3. Define Each Team’s Roles and Responsibilities
Clearly define the roles and responsibilities of each team to make sure marketing and sales are working together rather than stepping on each other’s toes:
- Marketing should focus on generating leads and creating compelling content.
- Sales should concentrate on converting those leads into residents.
Determine specifics, such as:
- How long marketing should nurture a lead.
- When the lead becomes sales qualified.
- When sales should take over the lead.
When each team’s responsibilities are clear and focused, they can help each other when coming across valuable information that may affect their roles. For instance, when talking with prospects, sales may learn about disconnects in messaging that can help marketing fine-tune content.
4. Bring Both Departments Together to Grow Understanding
Better collaboration begins with mutual understanding. Marketing can grasp the challenges sales encounters in closing deals, while sales can gain insight into the creative strategies driving marketing campaigns and the pain points today’s prospects are facing.
To facilitate awareness
- Organize joint training sessions to educate both teams about each other’s processes and challenges.
- Create a mutual understanding that fosters empathy and a stronger partnership.
Tools to facilitate collaboration:
1. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Systems
A robust CRM system, such as HubSpot, Aline, Welcome Home or Salesforce, is essential for managing interactions with potential residents. It provides a centralized platform where both sales and marketing can track leads, monitor engagement and share information.
When using a CRM, keep the data clean to achieve maximum results:
- Perform regular audits of the data.
- Remove duplicates, fix errors and fill in missing information.
- Delete outdated and irrelevant records.
Ensure everyone is speaking the same language by documenting how to label contacts. Agree on stages or activities that trigger action by a specific team. For instance, a request for a tour may put a contact in a “hot” category that sales should act on. A download may put a contact in a category that requires further nurturing by marketing.
2. Marketing Automation Platforms
Marketing automation platforms like Marketo, Pardot and Mailchimp streamline marketing tasks, allowing the marketing team to create personalized email and other campaigns at scale. These tools also provide valuable analytics that can help refine marketing strategies.
3. Collaboration Software
Tools like Slack, Microsoft Teams and Asana facilitate real-time communication and project management. They enable both teams to collaborate on campaigns, share updates and keep track of tasks and deadlines, keeping everyone updated and in the loop.
4. Analytics and Reporting Tools
Data-driven decision-making is crucial for successful sales and marketing collaboration. Tools like Google Analytics and SEMrush provide insights into campaign performance, lead behavior and market trends, helping teams make informed decisions. To use these tools effectively:
- Choose the key performance indicators (KPIs) most valuable for assessing campaigns and progress toward your goals.
- Adjust the metrics if needed to get a better understanding of results.
- Reevaluate and make changes to your marketing plans based on campaign performance.
Create an “everyone sells” culture:
If your sales and marketing teams already work together as partners, ensure they are working with the leadership team and other departments in communicating their goals and objectives and keeping everyone apprised of their sales and marketing efforts. Adopt an “everyone sells” policy that highlights each department’s role in maintaining excellence, from the grounds crew and the way the campus looks to the front desk and the first impression given to callers.
Share updates and campaign results to show all departments how their efforts are positively affecting marketing your community. For instance, if a visitor comments on how clean the common areas are, housekeeping should know about it. When staff members see they have an impact, they can’t help but want to continue contributing to the community’s success.
Finally, the most crucial step in the whole process is to have leadership support. To make the collaboration truly successful, you need leadership buy-in. If you don’t already have it, it’s time to make a case for how a solid sales and marketing collaboration can help the bottom line—a language every leader understands.
