Remington BeggWe’ve already devoted several blog posts on explaining exactly what a Smarketing team is and how it will help your company maximize your ROI. A company with poor alignment between departments can see revenues decline by 4%. Your company doesn’t have to make this mistake, though! Instead, you can be a brand with good alignment between Sales and Marketing Teams that achieve 20% annual revenue growth in a year. Create a stable and lasting partnership between the two teams with a strategic approach that treats them as a single, revenue-generating organization, not adv
ersaries. That’s a Smarketing Team!
But just having a Smarketing Team isn’t the end of the road. You need to ensure that the Team and all of the members are in it to make it as successful as possible. If you aren’t sure how things are going with your team, ask yourself these six questions:
#1 How Cohesive is My Team?
There are a number of key factors which can help predict how cohesive your Smarketing Team will be. The three biggest factors are trust, respect, and affirmation. The members of your team must feel fully respected by their peers and like their opinions are met with consideration, even in a situation when other may disagree with their ideas. Without this positive affirmation, the members will be less likely to put their opinions forwards and the Smarketing Team’s progress will slow to a crawl. There’s research to back this up, of course, so keep your Smarketing Teams’ relationships cohesive and well-functioning the same way you manage any healthy relationship.
#2 How Task-Diverse is Their Day?
Doing the same thing all day, every day is actually not what is best for productivity. The brain actually benefits to doing different types of tasks. On the other hand, don’t confuse being task-diverse with multitasking. It’s not efficient to try to do many things at once; instead, do a variety of Smarketing-related functions, one at a time. Let your team members build their days so they have diverse sets of tasks to do, and you may just see better results and happier outcomes.
#3 How Big is Your Team?
Amazon CEO, Jezz Bezos, has a great rule to building teams at his company: if you can’t feed the team with two large pizzas, the team is too big. With too many team members, there will naturally be too many opinions and ideas on how to best move forward. Allowing the team to have too many choices will slow your productivity and leave people feeling regretful. The exact number of team members that works best for your company is up to you, but when it comes to an effective Smarketing Team, bigger isn’t always better.
#4 What is The Personality Mix of Your Team?
To have a well-rounded team, be sure to include a mix of the five different personality types. In the 1970s, two groups of personality researchers independently came to the conclusion that most personality traits can placed in five broad categories- the Big Five. They are:
- Openness: Those who score high for this trait tend to enjoy adventure and are open to new experiences.
- Conscientiousness: High scorers for conscientiousness are generally organized and dependable.
- Extraversion: Those who are high on this scale draw their energy from being around others, so they tend to be more sociable.
- Agreeableness: High scorers for this trait are often trusting, helpful, and compassionate.
- Emotional stability: People with high scores for this trait are usually confident and don’t tend to worry often.
You may be tempted to think putting people with the same personality on the group will make it flow easier and leave little room for tension, but research suggests that this is not true. Actively encourage healthy debates so your team is going in the best direction, not in the direction the loudest person decided on.
#5 Are You Hiring the Right People?
If you’re having a hard time filling your team with the right people, the problem could be in your hiring process. In order to have a high-performing Smarketing Team, you need to build it with people looking to be high performing. Not everyone will be onboard with that it takes to make a Smarketing team great, and that’s okay. Look for people who have high standards for themselves and want to be a part of a team with those same standards. Hiring a bad fit or forcing a current employee into a position they don’t or won’t fit in won’t make your Smarketing team anything but a mess.
#6 Do You Consciously Try to Make Your Team Happy?
If your Smarketing Team is going to be genuinely happy, it probably won’t happen by accident. Go out of your way to make them happy! This doesn’t mean to make everyday a party; you are running a business, afterall. But make every reasonable effort to keep them happy with their jobs, by providing them the support, supplies, and information they need to excel at their job. With the right people in the team and with you providing the right environment, your Smarketing Team will be happy, healthy, and effective.
If you’re just beginning a Smarketing Team, try asking yourself these questions and see if the answers help you mold the right kind of team for your brand. If you already have a Smarketing Team in place, What have you found to work best when putting your team together? Tell me in the comments or tweet me!
If this is the first you’ve heard of a Smarketing Team, our eBook Lead Scoring: The Smarketer’s Guide offers a more detailed explanation of what the Team is all about. Download your free copy today!
