No person is an island, and no department is, either.
When employees stick to their bubble and don’t collaborate with other team members, they do everyone a disservice, including your clients. The most effective way to create optimized, targeted, and successful marketing campaigns is by — say it with me — working together!
This certainly isn’t always intentional, but the result is always the same. It can be especially detrimental when building well-rounded reports for clients to show your progress. How can you deliver a comprehensive report without everyone’s data?
Today, we’re going to cover a few key steps you and your business can take to break down those silos and create a path forward together.
Improve Communication
Here’s our biggest one. Like I said, silos are rarely intentional. Teams are so focused on their own tasks and what their results mean to their projects that it’s easy for other people’s requests to get pushed to the back burner. This means your employees aren’t on the same page about the big picture, which explains how each team’s data works together like puzzle pieces to create a holistic report for a client.
This is a challenging box to check off. Promising to email or Slack more frequently isn’t actually a plan and won’t last. That means you’ll need a few tangible tools to improve your intercommunication.
New Tools
Speak of the Devil! There are handfuls of applications on the market that promise to support team communication and get rid of silos. If your team is willing, it could be time to research a new tool that’s accessible and has features that will help your team grow. (That’s why research is required! Fancy features are fun, but if they’re not contributing to your goals, don’t bother.)
Personally, our team loves Asana. However, there are many other major players that make a difference, like HubSpot, Salesforce, and monday.com.
One Data Source
Do you have a single place where all of your data lives? This is the best way to reduce repetitive emails asking for old reports or statistics. Of course, having one centralized spot will require a good deal of organization (and your employees’ promise to uphold the organizational strategy). Still, the streamlined communication, as a result, will be worth it.
Consistent Reporting
All these steps are intended to make your reporting easier and more detailed, so take advantage of them! Staying on a consistent reporting schedule will encourage each department to hit deadlines for sharing data results. It will also create new habits for more frequent communication between teams.
The Bottom Line
Silos aren’t just a hassle to work around. They’re a sign of dysfunction and will only lead to more problems in the future. The sooner you can tackle your isolated departments, the sooner you’ll be able to start working towards more powerful marketing strategies for your clients.
