Sales vs. Marketing is one of those classic struggles. But rather than arguing over who did more to bring in new customers last month, there are a lot of ways that the two divisions can work together. A well-executed inbound marketing plan can make a world of difference.

Make salespeople more efficient

Salespeople spend a lot of time repeating themselves. New prospects frequently have the same questions, need things repeated, and want more information on certain things. Rather than educating each new prospect, a lot of the process can be automated through lead nurturing. By setting up certain checkpoints, leads can be nurtured through automated email responses and offered educational materials that will help to inform their decision. This also provides great information on who your most interested prospects are.

Once a prospect has displayed enough interest, your salespeople can know who to call first. The people who have opened your emails, downloaded your materials, and emailed back are clearly the warmest prospects. A system like this allows salespeople to become more efficient by spending their time with leads who are already educated on your product.

Let marketing fill the funnel and track the results

Marketers spend a lot of time getting people to notice your product. Whether it's through general awareness campaigns or highly targeted adwords, their goal is to generate interest from the right group of people. A little collaboration between marketing and sales can make sure that they have their sights set on the right groups of people.

From there, the marketing team is responsible for filling the sales funnel. Using an inbound marketing plan to collect leads should make this no problem. By creating offers for targeted audiences, people will begin to sign-up for more of what you produce. These people already have shown an interest in what you do, it's now just time to continue to market to them. A well-designed inbound marketing plan can push them further down the sales funnel until they're ready to talk to someone. When that happens, it's time for the sales team to pick up the phone.

By combining their efforts, sales and marketing have the ability to truly augment each other's work and become more effective. The key to all of this, however, is a sound inbound marketing plan that takes interested people, converts them into leads, and then lets the sales team bring them onboard as a customer. Organizations that have sales and marketing work together can expect for a much bigger impact on their bottom line.