Sales and customer service: helping your teams work better together

Sales and customer service are two sides of the same coin. When properly synchronized, these two departments can work wonders! But sometimes, these two people seem to speak different languages. Know what I mean?

If we were to use a sporting metaphor, we'd say that sales teams are the forwards. Their expertise and strategy have but one objective: to score goals (i.e. close sales, you follow).

Customer Success is more like a versatile midfielder (did you say Griezman?): it trains our customers, builds strong, lasting relationships with them and helps them to grow.

Let's take a look at how to get your sales and customer service teams working together extremely effectively.

Sales teams and customer service: understanding each other's role

Where does one team's scope of intervention begin and the other's end? This is often the point of greatest friction. It's this mutual understanding that needs to be established in order to implement an effective collaboration strategy.

The sales team gets in touch

We know what we're supposed to do: find opportunities, present the company's products or services and, ultimately, turn prospects into customers. To achieve this, we have more than one trick up our sleeve!

We master the art of negotiation, have an excellent knowledge of the offer and identify the needs of prospects. But our work is not a one-off affair: we also have to lay the foundations for a relationship of trust. It's this relationship that is then nurtured by customer service.

Basically, you make a decisive pass.

Customer service creates lasting relationships

Once the customer has been integrated, Customer Success (or Account Managers) come into play. They ensure that customers are satisfied, and that they remain so over the long term. They are the guarantors of customer relations and satisfaction.

They must also pass on important information to the sales and product development teams. Customer service is a repository of valuable data, essential to the company's development.

That's why teamwork is so important!

Who does what?

There's no secret to optimal collaboration: you need a good strategy. And to put it in place, you need to ask the right questions:

• Who handles customer integration? When is the account transferred to Customer Success? In some cases, sales staff may retain the account for the first few months to ensure integration.
• Who is responsible for expansion? Does customer management take care of up-selling, i.e. expanding the existing customer portfolio?
• Who is responsible for renewing contracts? If the ball is in sales' court, the account must at least be monitored.
• Who carries out proof of concept (POC)? Proof of concept doesn't follow exactly the same rules as sales or customer success.

All these questions are crucial to establishing clear rules in terms of mission and scope, and to setting up effective communication processes.

With us, sales staff can propose POCs to key prospects. But each POC request (before being proposed to the prospect) is scrutinized to determine whether or not it adds value.

Léa (Account Manager) and Jean (Sales Manager) analyze sales requests on a weekly basis.

This aligns teams with key POCs and optimizes impact (and customer conversion). Because once the sales person has proposed the POC, the Account Manager team takes over.

How do you define collaboration zones to encourage communication?

To enable them to work together effectively, it's essential to create solid processes between the two teams.

Allocate accounts and define the transfer process

How will accounts be divided between the two teams? A clear and transparent division of tasks and responsibilities is the starting point for successful collaboration.

As well as defining the role of each team member, we need to clearly define the handover process. Some areas are grey: they belong to both teams to some extent. These are the danger zones: if everyone is responsible, no one is.

We don't want to leave things to chance and risk damaging the customer experience. That's why we've set up clear transfer processes, with no loss of information or time.

A single goal: a seamless customer experience

We all know: the customer experience is the key to a company's success. When sales managers and Customer Success Managers (CSMs) work together, the challenge is to deliverthe smoothest possible experience.

The customer shouldn't have the impression of changing interlocutors, they shouldn't have to repeat themselves or (horror!) have the feeling of being lost.

The keys are: the right information, at the right time, in the right place:

• The right information: we define in advance a template with the key information required by the CSM.
• At the right time: a CSM cannot be put in touch with a customer without having all the information. It is therefore essential to synchronize before making a presentation to the customer.
• In the right place: the key to any business is... data! We need to be able to find all relevant information at all times. For this, we all have an excellent tool, which has to store everything: CRM.

Building bridges between the sales and customer service teams creates a synergy that propels the company to new horizons.

What are good collaboration practices?

Regular feedback

In life as in business, communication is fundamental. We all have our habits and routines, but sometimes we forget that there's a world outside our bubble. Regular feedback enables us to open our eyes and take into account our colleagues' points of view, which turn out to be just as important as our own.

Regular feedback creates a virtuous circle, where teams support and develop each other and, of course, do their utmost to ensure that the customer is the big winner.

So how do you set up this feedback?

The first step is to create open channels of communication. Informal meetings are always a good idea, but you also need to think about structured meetings, with specific points to discuss.

At Modjo, we have implemented a "committee review". Every month, an account manager and a sales representative meet to discuss collaboration and processes for improving practices.

We have also decided to be part of a single business unit, even if the teams and managers are different. This allows us to be autonomous and efficient in managing the customer experience.

Development of scenarios and common game modes

A little preparation never hurt anyone. Developing common scenarios and guides ensures that sales and customer service teams are on the same wavelength.

It's not just about knowing what to do, but understanding why you're doing it and how it fits into an overall strategy. Shared playbooks are also an excellent way of capitalizing on best practices, avoiding each team reinventing the wheel itself.

A platform like Modjo enables proactive information sharing. The whole team can easily find information, and above all, everyone has a global view of a customer, a sale or a company product or service.

All teams are aligned with the same reality, so that everyone can make informed decisions.

Getting these two departments to work together effectively isn't just a good idea in theory. No, it's a real performance driver.

This helps to improve the customer experience, build loyalty, retain customers and turn customers into ambassadors.

Ultimately, this turns into a competitive advantage, which also helps create a consistent brand image. In short, it's a real asset to a company's reputation and long-term viability.

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