As companies seek better internal alignment, marketing and sales departments are usually seen as good places to start. The synergies, however, are not always clear and the complexities of this integration grow as firms increase in size. Nonetheless, the results are well worth overcoming the challenges.

The integration of sales and marketing processes helps organization better define target audiences, generate more qualified leads and ultimately, improves the bottom line. From a healthcare public relations perspective, those are important steps to improve perception of a solid healthcare organization.

A great example of a company that overcame these challenges comes from HubSpot, as Carolina Samsing, their Latin America manager, explains in her article, “10 Tried-and-True Tips for Sales and Marketing Alignment.” When her sales team grew exponentially in a short period of time, “communication between Sales and Marketing was much harder to get right,” she explains.

Below are seven tips to help align marketing and sales within your healthcare organization:

  1. Meet regularly. Samsing explains that teams work better when they’re in sync. And, in order for that to happen, they have to work together. She cites tactical examples, such as attending weekly sales meetings and having monthly encounters with sales managers to go over goals and update achievements. The HubSpot manager also suggests marketing be part of new salespeople’s onboarding. That way, the integration will be present from day one.
  2. Create a team email group. Pulling together marketing and sales members in one email group makes it easier to share strategical information. It is crucial, however, to have common sense about what is worth sharing with everyone, otherwise this approach may become ineffective as members deem the emails useless.
  3. Have a content creation process in place. As sales reps are out in the field and constantly engaging clients, they have a great understanding of what customers want and what may help convince them. Samsing suggests holding brainstorming sessions during weekly sales meetings and integrating ideas on a Google Doc, for example.
  4. Coordinate your content marketing campaigns with Sales. Sharing the promotion calendar and forwarding new offers to the sales team helps them stay up-to-date with marketing initiatives.
  5. Listen to calls. Hopping on a pitch with a salesperson can help better understand the customer and selling process. For marketers and public relations professionals, it is a chance to learn the stakeholders’ language and improve messaging in future content and even follow-up emails.
  6. Organize sales enablement resources in one easy-to-access location. “Marketers work hard to create sales enablement resources such as brochures, company overviews, or presentations, but all that hard work goes to waste if your sales team can’t find (and use) them,” clarifies Samsing.
  7. Have fun and get to know each other. Getting to know coworkers outside of the office helps build trust and dependability. It can’t be forced, it has to be part of the company culture. But it definitely has positive implications as teams and individuals get more comfortable with each other.

Sales and Marketing integration also has a lot to do with team members’ personalities and company culture. Unhealthy competition between departments is a practice that can jeopardize collaboration and end up dooming any possibility of internal alignment.

If you’re in healthcare, insurance, technology or other professional services industries, and need help with a PR, marketing or social media campaign, contact Scott Public Relations.

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