How one strategic conversation can give your campaigns more momentum.

For Life Science companies, getting your Sales and Marketing teams on the same page can be an ongoing challenge. These two teams often operate from a different game plan and from various locations around the world making quality time together more of a luxury than necessity. If a new product or marketing campaign is on the horizon for your life science brand, one strategic conversation could be the tipping point toward success.

I facilitate Brand Discovery Workshops and quite often during these workshops I’m helping Bioresearch Sales and Marketing teams work through the issues that can prevent a campaign or product launch from reaching its full potential. For those who don’t have the luxury of time and a workshop, these three takeaways could help you facilitate an internal conversation between teams and bring your next campaign to life.

Defining the Campaign Purpose and Goals
Whenever there is brand confusion and someone is wondering, “Why are we doing this?” the success of your campaign is at risk. I start every Brand Discovery Session by putting structure around overall business goals and, when appropriate, creating a rough Messaging Platform that defines those goals. Sometimes this part of the conversation is a brainstorm, other times it’s as easy as making sure that everyone is in agreement. Either way, getting something definitive on paper helps to focus the conversation and garner alignment down the road.

Addressing Challenges
Once we’ve defined campaign goals, the next step is uncovering internal challenges to accomplishing them. This can be the most dynamic part of a Brand Discovery Session, because it could be the first time team members have vocalized their issues in a group setting. This isn’t a gripe session. It’s a chance for Sales and Marketing to see eye-to-eye and resolve issues that might otherwise dilute the power of a campaign or product launch. As an example, your Marketing team may be creating Sales Aids that are too cumbersome for use in the field. Hearing this from your Sales team can empower everyone to find a better solution that they can all get behind. It’s also quite possible that during this conversation you discover additional research is needed to deliver a game-changing campaign. And while this may be a setback for an upcoming launch, it’s better to find information like this out early than to discover it from sales team numbers later on.

Inspiring Creative Solutions
Open conversations between Marketing and Sales teams often result in sparks of creativity no one expects. It’s not unusual to have a team member express a truth about your brand in a such a powerful way it becomes a headline. For this reason, I recommend recording Brand Discovery Sessions, or at least assigning one person to capture everything in writing. Everyone in a group session should feel free to share thoughts, even if they aren’t on the “creative” team. This is how new tactics and exciting ideas are born.

Need help formulating a Brand Discovery Workshop? I often co-host workshops with internal marketing team leaders. Learn more about our half-day or whole day sessions that can help your Bioresearch marketing and sales team align goals.