Once you identify your ideal customer, share it. Share it with your sales department. Share it with your accounting department. Share it with your customer service and shipping and R&D departments. Why?
For an organization or company to work cohesively, everyone within it needs to share the same vision or goal and have the same understanding of who they’re there to serve. If your marketing department came to a conclusion that the sales department disagrees with, or if the accounting department can shed some light on another aspect of your perfect customer, all the better. Despite the culture and attitude in many offices, departments are not in competition with one another.
This past summer, John Hall, contributor for www.forbes.com, said it best when he said, “Companies that put up barriers between departments will fail in the long run. Leading companies are built on departments that work together.”
Unifying departments doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Creating communication between different parts of the organization can be as easy as hosting more meetings to make sure everyone is on the same page or talking informally but frequently to members of each team.
Need a more structured approach? Stephanie Tran, a marketer with SparkReaction—a company that helps other companies organize, optimize, and align their sales and marketing—suggests creating a Service Level Agreement to define each department’s responsibilities.
Whatever your approach, keep the lines of communication open organization-wide.