Imagine a bustling marketplace where your sales teams are continually armed with all the information, facts, and use cases they need to charm customers and clinch deals effortlessly. Unfortunately, the reality in many organisations is quite different. Sales, marketing, training, and product gems are trapped in silos, hidden away like long-lost treasures.

The term ‘organisational silos’ also refers to stovepipe organisations, where sharing information and communicating is scarce. ….“When communication is scarce in a (big) business, achieving the same goal and looking at the big picture becomes a daunting task. (“Silo Mentality: What Are Organizational Silos and Their Impact – Helpjuice”)

You only actually realise they exist when you hear that sales can’t find the latest approved presentation or product specs or marketing tells you that Jack in the Product team has gone off-brand and created his own SharePoint site full of material he has personally created to use with customers as nothing is available from marketing. The content is there, but it may as well be in a top-secret vault.

Departments can also speak their own language in their own world. Marketing speaks in creative positive tones, product dives deep into tech talk and jargon, while training has their own mystic codes. The result? A lack of clarity and confusion, making collaboration feel like hard work with teams trying to decipher and translate each other’s words.

But failure to align these teams will lead to unnecessary complexity, wasted budget and critically, wasted resources. The speed of business today creates such an intensity that everyone only has time to focus and channel their energies on delivering their part of the process.

But everyone knows the solution, right? “Go Digital”

The impact of using digital platforms and processes to improve how we work together, while on paper makes great sense by making us more accessible, visible, and transparent – can also create a maze you can easily get lost in.

Every one of us will have a story about how this great new tool or super digital platform is pitched as Nirvana. The answer to all our problems. But we are all suffering from the impact caused by the speed and reach digital has unlocked.

The number of ways to reach someone every minute of the day continues to grow, creating distractions (socials, texts, notifications) – and that can add to inefficiency or at worse, to feeling overwhelmed.

Sales teams are drowning in tools and overwhelmed with data. 94% of sales organisations plan to consolidate their tech stack in the next 12 months. (ZDnet: How high performing sales teams use technology to win in today’s economy- Dec 2022)

The average member of a large enterprise is managing notifications from multiple channels, tools, and platforms, in addition to email, that create increased expectations of speed and agility.

This urgency creates such intensity that people only have time to focus and channel their energies on delivering their objectives in short time frames, rather than taking time to step back and look at the bigger picture. Meaning the silo continues to function – but now it’s more frustrating.

So what’s the answer?

For some organisations, it’s the introduction of the Revenue Operations (RevOps) structure. Giving them a focus and creating a strong alignment across the business to support revenue generation. From corporate communications to lead management, sales enablement, professional services, and customer marketing, helping to reduce the impact of silos.

For others though, it can be yet another digital tool, but this time with AI, or with better data insights! But again, if not managed in the right way – this can sometimes just mask the issues and help maintain a siloed approach.

There is an easier and faster way to break down silos though….in our humble opinion.

It’s to enable, engage and activate – the entire organisation. In order to help sales do what they need to do. Sell!

We look at it from the point of a digital sales playbook:

• Enable: Providing one single source of truth with the added integration of processes, content and more importantly context, so you’ll be strengthening the customer experience as well.
• Engage: Bringing your core teams together – marketing, product, training, and sales – with a single focus. To sell more. 
• Activate: Then, the key step – creating a bond and shared purpose between all stakeholders, ensuring the playbook becomes essential: 
  to marketing and product – as a way of being heard and increasing ROI
  to enablement – as a channel for context and knowledge (not just content) and increasing value
  to sales – knowing there is one place to help them make every customer conversation count.

Breaking down internal silos is the key to empowering sales teams with easy access to not just marketing, training, and product content, but context. Get it right and it encourages collaboration, streamlines processes, and ensures everyone across the organisation can focus on a joint objective. The end game – delighting customers and generating revenue. Do it right and it actually unlocks the ability to sell more products and services – removes confusion – and unites your organisation.

If you want to talk about how SalesEASE could break down barriers for your business, book a meeting today.

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