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How can a service level agreement (SLA) align teams and benefit my business’s bottom line?

The union between marketing and sales may sound a little strange to professionals in both areas.

However, once you get past that initial confusion, it’s easy to see how this practice brings huge

benefits, not only for each of the teams involved, but also for the entire business, generating more

and more opportunities and simplifying internal processes .

But you might be wondering: what is the secret behind the “Ventarketing” strategy? Well, there are a

number of important factors there, but one of the main ones is the SLA (Service Level

Agreement), which “turns on” this combination between marketing and sales.

Do you want to know more about what this acronym stands for and how it can help you align both

teams? If your answer is “yes,” keep reading!

What is Service Level Agreement (SLA)?

How important is SLA?

6 practices to build a broad-impact SLA

What is Service Level Agreement (SLA)?

The term SLA stands for Service Level Agreement.

But what does this really telegram number list mean? Basically, it’s an agreement between two

or more areas , usually marketing and sales, when they come together to achieve better results for

the business.

This agreement:

determines the essential roles of each team,

set clear goals for both of you,

reconciles the metrics that must be monitored,

defines when to transition a marketing lead to sales,

etc

In other words, the SLA is the document responsible for keeping everyone aligned with the same goal. This helps prevent expectations from being higher than they should be for one of the sectors, or one of them having many more tasks than the other, for example.

How important is SLA?  how-can-a-service

As you can see from the explanation how to perform a complete digital audit? above, the SLA is a kind

of contract between the marketing and sales teams.

Through it, everyone is aware of what they must do and knows what to expect from the

other . But does it make that much of a difference at work? Of course it does!

Check out these benefits that SLA brings when set up correctly:

Alignment of goals

The first benefit, of course, is knowing benin businesses directory that with an SLA applied

appropriately from the beginning of the strategy, the objectives will always be aligned.

This agreement must be very specific in terms of objectives to be met and timeframes for this to

happen.

That way, having the same results in mind is much easier for everyone, and from there decisions can

be made that facilitate the achievement of those goals .

Without an SLA, each team’s idea of ​​success would likely be quite different and their actions would

not complement each other, causing the strategy to fail.

Focus on the right activities  how-can-a-service

Since the agreement also defines exactly what aspects of the work each team should perform, we can say that it helps keep the focus on the right activities .

The idea of ​​SLA is not to focus on the activities that the other team has to perform, like some kind of quality inspection.

Even because the professionals in each area know very well how to perform their functions, isn’t that true?

The goal is to focus on the activities each team must perform to deliver their part to the best of their ability and ensure that results are not negatively impacted by poor performance.

Ease of measuring efforts

How do you know if each team is fulfilling its role, if the SLA is really working and if Ventarketing is giving the expected results?

There is only one way to prove all of that, and yes, that is by using metrics to measure your efforts. The good news is that it is not complicated to do this.

Modern analytics tools even allow you to generate detailed reports, which will help you see how everyone is performing against the plan.

Naturally, the next step is to act on the data found to constantly improve.

More efficient processes  how-can-a-service

Another great benefit is that in order to meet objectives within the established deadline, more efficient processes are developed internally.

These processes, to be efficient, must take into account more frequent communication between the two teams , as well as the monitoring of metrics to facilitate changes.

The SLA will play an important role in improving these processes, as it will be done with the intention of complying with this agreement more calmly.

Better working environment

Ultimately, this advantage may not be so noticeable at first, but it will soon prove to be one of the most important for long-term business development . Many companies, in addition to not having integrated sales and marketing departments, unfortunately see an internal gap between these two teams , as if they were rivals. Such conflict is destructive for business!

So, as the SLA is put into action and teams collaborate in the right way, the work environment becomes smoother and more pleasant.

6 practices to build a broad-impact SLA  how-can-a-service

We already know what it is and why it is important, but how do we create a good SLA to unite these two forces once and for all?

It is of great importance that some measures be taken so that this agreement is well established and really works. Here are some of them:

1. Set goals for the company how-can-a-service

The first step is for the two teams to talk to establish business objectives. 

Only after that will it be possible to move forward with the strategy. But what exactly should we define at this meeting?

It is essential to know how many leads are needed , on average, for each customer conversion.

Then, with the number of customers the company hopes to win, it is possible to calculate how many leads to generate and what conversion rate is needed.

Once they know what objectives will be pursued, they will jointly select which metrics and KPIs to use to evaluate whether this is actually being done.

Finally, you need to set a deadline for what you planned to do to happen, as this will help keep your teams focused.