All companies exist to sell products and services so they can generate revenue. Reaching this goal means that you need a staff of experienced marketers and sales representatives. As an owner or manager, you know that these two groups play crucial roles in the company’s success. When you step into the departments, though, you often find that they operate in such different ways that they barely coordinate with each other.

The difficulty of getting your sales and marketing departments working together often depends on a company’s current culture. Some businesses don’t have any problems to bring their teams together because they have shared, open spaces that encourage collaboration. Other businesses keep departments so separate that they rarely interact outside of email.

Before you start on your next project, take a close look at how your departments interact. If they seem too separated, then you should take steps to bring them together. By doing so, you empower employees to do their jobs better and feel happier at work. Use the following steps to make sure your sales and marketing departments not only have access to each other but respect and understand the important roles that they play in the business.

Develop buyer personas to reach common goals

Marketing professionals create buyer personas based on market research. By interviewing consumers, measuring demographics, and watching what people buy, marketers can construct buyer personas that help them target audiences better.

Sales professionals also use buyer personas, but they’re not always aware of it. Some of the best salespersons on your staff intuitively know how they should approach different types of consumers.

For marketers, making buyer personas is a science. For sellers, it’s more of an art.

Both groups have a lot to learn from each other, so bring them together when creating buyer personas for upcoming products or services. You don’t necessarily have to do this for every campaign, but you should get the departments together occasionally so they can share their perspectives. As a result, you’ll get team members who know how to generate accurate buyer personas that help the marketing and sales departments reach common goals.

Create a shared language

Marketers and salespersons often work on such specific problems that they need to use words that average people don’t know. Since each group of professionals has its own concerns, colleagues don’t always understand each other when talking about projects. Unfortunately, sales and marketing communications can become strained. This language barrier not only stifles conversation but can create some animosity between departments.

Creating a shared language improves the working environment greatly. As a business owner or manager, you may want to start by making a list of common terms. The list that you give sales associates may include words like:

• Bounce rate
• Churn rate
• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Conversion rate optimization (CRO)
• Evergreen content

The list you give marketers may include sales terms like:

• Budget, authority, need, timeline (BANT)
• Closed-won
• Closed-lost
• Forecasting
• Lifetime value (LTV)

Once everyone understands the same jargon, they can communicate more easily and have more respect for what their colleagues do.

Also, encourage employees to include definitions when they use words and phrases that people in other departments might not know. Over time, everyone will learn the same language. This practice will also clarify what messages mean and prevent people from looking up dubious definitions on sites like Urban Dictionary.

Hold regular inter-departmental meetings

Sales and marketing working together makes a lot of sense because they both want to reach customers and sell more products. Despite having a common goal, the departments don’t mix that often in the office. This can create a lot of misconceptions about the type of people who work in marketing or sales.

Inter-departmental meetings help erode misconceptions. When your top salespeople hear marketers discuss intelligent ways to reach more consumers, they can gain a lot of respect for people working in the other department. The same goes for marketers who discover that the sales staff has good insights into how the company can use tools like content marketing to boost sales.

Your sales and marketing departments want the same thing, but they may not realize it because they often take different approaches to increasing sales. Getting everyone together for inter-departmental meetings makes it clear that the departments need each other.

Host events so marketing and sales professionals can mingle

Not everyone shines during meetings. Some people don’t feel comfortable speaking to large groups of people. Others don’t have their best ideas until they have had time to process what they’ve heard their colleagues say. That’s why you need to host events that let marketing and sales professionals mingle in a casual environment.

You may want to host a small party in the office, take everyone out to dinner, or encourage colleagues to meet at a bar after work. Now you have an opportunity for more people to share their ideas and talk about subjects that aren’t related to work.

The obvious advantage to hosting events is that team members get to know each other better. The results of team-building may surprise you when it occurs across department lines. Suddenly, you have a sales associate reaching out to the marketing director for advice about how he or she can approach a potential client. Next, you have a copywriter calling a sales representative to get insight into how he or she would respond to a certain phrase.

Your sales and marketing teams have more in common than they think. Bring them together in a relaxed environment so they can discover those commonalities and learn to think of each other as excellent resources.

Maintain a consistent company culture across departments

A lot of companies struggle with maintaining consistent cultures across departments. Some deviations may make sense. If you have a graphic artist who gets the best ideas while sketching in a nearby park, then you obviously want to give that person the opportunity to do better work. When cultures drift too far apart, though, departments can start to resent each other. When employees from sales notice that the graphic artist spends a lot of time outside, they may get upset.

Maintaining a consistent company culture takes some effort, but it isn’t as difficult as some managers make it sound. Companies need strong leaders who can get all managers on the same page. You don’t want one manager who lets people come in late while another penalizes latecomers for the smallest infractions. Set standards that apply to everyone.

The current trend is to let employees make their own decisions so they can produce better work. If the graphic artist gets to sit in the park for two hours a day, then a sales rep gets to prepare for presentations at home. Assuming that you’ve hired trustworthy people who want to excel, people will work hard even when they aren’t in the office.

Emphasize why marketing and sales pros need each other

You know that marketing and sales professionals need each other to do their jobs properly. When you break down the work that each team does, you see how they support each other.

When sales reps meet with potential clients, they benefit from work that the marketing team has already done. If the potential clients are aware of your brand, then they are more likely to get on board.

When marketing teams create elaborate strategies to boost brand recognition, they rely on money brought in by the sales department convincing clients to purchase products and services.

The more you take apart the tasks of each department, the more commonalities you find. You don’t have two departments working independently of each other. You have a giant ecosystem that supports itself. Explain this reality to your marketing and sales professionals so they will gain a deeper respect for each other.

If an explanation doesn’t show your teams how much they need each other, then you may want to encourage collaboration. Have a few sales representatives work on a project with your marketing team. Have some marketers attend meetings with sales reps. Once they discover how much they rely on each other, they will develop a higher level of respect that helps them see the other department as an important resource that helps the company thrive.