Maximising B2B Fintech growth: Collaborative sales and marketing strategies

It's all too common for sales and marketing teams to work in isolation, creating a breeding ground for misalignment, inefficiencies, and squandered opportunities. Having worked as a Head of Marketing, I’ve been here. Often, the targets and incentives differ and it creates a competitive *even blame-like* culture – rather than collaborative.

But, by bridging the gap between sales and marketing, you can create exceptional revenue growth. 🚀

With that in mind, let’s delve into best practices. Just before that, we'll explore the importance of collaborative sales and marketing.👇

Why collaborative sales and marketing is key for B2B Fintech growth

We’ll start with the facts. Businesses with strong sales and marketing alignment are:

• 67% more effective at closing deals

• 58% more effective at retaining customers

• And generate 208% more revenue as a result of their marketing efforts. 

Hard stats to ignore. So, why is it this powerful? Ultimately, it’s because a collaborative sales and marketing approach:

✅Provides consistent messaging: Across marketing campaigns, sales conversations, and customer service interactions, the same messaging and tone is key to building trust, reinforcing your Fintech's value proposition, and creating a seamless journey for potential and existing customers.

✅Better lead generation and qualification: Marketing teams can leverage insights from sales to refine their lead generation strategies, targeting the right audiences and delivering high-quality leads. And sales teams can provide feedback on lead quality, enabling marketing to optimise their lead qualification processes. The result? More efficient and productive sales funnel, reducing wasted resources and increasing the likelihood of closing deals.

✅Improved customer experience and retention: Marketing teams can create content and campaigns that address the specific needs and pain points identified by sales, while sales teams can use the marketing collateral and insights to provide tailored solutions and support… Meaning customers receive consistent and valuable experiences, leading to increased satisfaction, loyalty, and long-term retention.

✅Increased sales productivity and efficiency: By providing sales teams with high-quality leads, relevant marketing content, and a deep understanding of the customer's needs, they can focus their efforts on closing deals rather than prospecting or creating collateral from scratch. Plus, a streamlined handoff process minimises friction and ensures a smooth transition for prospects, reducing the chances of lost opportunities.

✅Enhanced data-driven decision-making: When sales and marketing teams share data and insights, they can make more informed and data-driven decisions. Marketing teams can analyse sales data to optimise their campaigns and target the right audiences, while sales teams can use marketing data to identify trends, opportunities, and areas for improvement. 

Feeling convinced? Great. Now let’s look at the exact strategies used by leading B2Bs to gain these benefits:

5 collaborative Fintech sales and marketing strategies

We’ve been the marketing team working alongside many sales teams. And this is what we’ve found works best:

#1. Establish shared goals and metrics 📊

• Define common objectives: Sharing the same revenue generation, customer acquisition, and retention rates means both teams work towards a common purpose.

• Develop shared key performance indicators (KPIs): Set specific KPIs that both teams can track and measure their performance against – like lead conversion rates, customer lifetime value, and customer satisfaction scores, among others.

• Encourage transparency and regular progress reviews: Where both teams can share updates, analyse performance against the established KPIs, and make data-driven adjustments as needed.

#2. Implement effective lead management processes ✋

• Set lead scoring criteria and qualification processes: Make sure sales and marketing align on what’s deemed a high-quality lead – considering factors like demographics, behaviour, and engagement levels.

• Streamline lead handoff and follow-up procedures: Make it clear what the process is once a contact becomes a lead. This makes sure there’s a smooth transition from marketing communications to sales – and it minimises the risk of leads falling through the cracks.

💡Top tip: Set responsibilities for follow-up and nurturing activities to maximise conversion opportunities.

• Leverage tech: But not any tech. You need platforms that integrate. For example, you need to be capturing marketing engagements from email platforms, in your CRM. This allows for real-time data sharing, lead tracking, and collaborative lead management efforts. Sales and marketing are on the same page.

#3. Open communication and collaboration 📣

• Run joint planning and strategy sessions: Working together on things like value propositions, product launches, content development, and campaign planning makes sure strategies align.

• Regular check-ins: Even if it's email updates, keep sharing performance, insights and feedback. 

💡Top tip: Sales teams can provide valuable insights into customer pain points and objections, while marketing teams can offer feedback on campaign performance and messaging effectiveness.

#4. Invest in training and knowledge sharing 🧠

• Train sales on the latest marketing strategies, messages, and tools: Give sales teams the rundown on current marketing campaigns, messages, and materials. Armed with this, they can make the most of marketing resources during their chats with customers.

• Bring marketing up to speed on what customers really need: Let marketing in on the insights gathered directly from the customer. With a better grip on customer challenges and needs, marketing can tailor content that hits the mark, making every message more relatable.

#5. Leverage data and analytics 🔢

• Set up strong data tracking and reporting systems: To track KPIs for both sales and marketing. This allows for smart decision-making and strategy tweaks that can boost performance.

• Dive into customer, campaign, and sales data: Make it a habit to sift through data on how customers act, how campaigns are doing, and what the sales figures say.

💡Top tip: Spot patterns, trends, and chances to get better by pooling insights from both teams.

• Leverage insights from data to sharpen strategies: With the insights gained from your data deep-dives, continuously fine-tune your approaches and boost the efficiency of both sales and marketing efforts. Keep tweaking your methods, messages, and how you allocate resources to push performance and results up a notch.

Collaborative sales and marketing strategies spark growth

So, we’ve taken you through the ins and outs of why a tight-knit team is so key – covering everything from smoother lead gen to top-notch customer experiences. And let’s not forget those stats: when sales and marketing sync up, it’s proven to have a direct impact on revenue. 💸💸

You could look at these strategies as a roadmap for B2B growth. But it's the execution of these strategies, backed by a culture of open communication and mutual respect, that will truly deliver the results.

By boosting its visibility and credibility through marketing, and having the sales collateral to support it, it’s a closed loop on sales and marketing – meaning opportunities aren’t missed. You can build trust and recognition in the industry and move from working with small credit providers to top-tier banks. 

Key takeaway: Ultimately, a sales and marketing team that works closely together = consistent revenue.