Are your sales and marketing teams aligned? From the dawn of recorded history, it’s been widely accepted that two is better than one. Adam and Eve, peanut butter and jelly, and C-3PO and R2-D2 among the examples that prove this theory.
Today, we’re going to talk about a duo that’s often reluctant to partner up: sales and marketing. These two critical business units would rather fling their toys at each other than play nicely. Indeed, sales and marketing have a history of what I’ll call non-cooperation.
But a few megatrends—a digital revolution, the launch of AI, and a hyper-charged marketplace—have these two groups reassessing their relationship. With so much competition, and so much at stake, the name of the game is harmony.
In fact, it’s remarkable what can happen when sales and marketing join proverbial hands for the greater good.
- Organizations with tightly aligned sales and marketing functions enjoy 36% higher customer retention rates.
- Aligning sales and marketing also leads to 38% higher sales win rates. (Source: ZoomInfo)
An aligned sales and marketing approach not only brings more people in the door and improves business results—it also greatly improves the experience for the customer, making them more likely to stay with you.
How to Align Sales and Marketing
Though we’re not saying you need to agree upon everything, there are four key steps you can take to foster strong, sustainable alignment between marketing and sales.
1. Develop a Common Scorecard
In many cases, sales and marketing are collaborating on the same campaigns and targeting the same customers or personas, but the success metrics, by design, are different.
This means even though they’re working toward a common purpose, they’re measuring outcomes differently. In many cases, sales and marketing departments have different leaders with different leadership styles—a reality that drives this gap even wider.
One thing to consider: a common scorecard of marketing and sales performance metrics. This will foster agreement on what constitutes a marketing qualified lead, sales qualified lead, sales accepted lead, KPIs, and other measurements. This will really come in handy when you are jointly executing on sales and marketing initiatives. You’ll work together better.
2. Sync Up Your Processes
It’s almost universal: 97% of sales and marketing professionals report issues with process alignment. That’s because these groups often have different departmental methods or tools that are not integrated or have little in common.
For example, somebody from marketing is collecting data from a lead, then passing it on to sales to follow up—with no visibility into the result of that interaction. It’s critical to get your systems, and your people, talking to each other to improve collaboration between sales and marketing.
I was working with a client who purchased seats for their CRM system for all their salespeople but only provided one shared seat for marketing. This prevented the smooth transfer of information between teams, thus getting in the way of process communication.
3. Craft a Consistent Message
Many sales and marketing leaders feel their content messaging is not aligned. When you think about this, it makes sense. Often, marketing is charged with creating messaging that’s very product focused, heavy on top-line brand awareness.
On the other side of the coin, sales is looking for content that’s more solution focused—messaging that illustrates how the offering addresses the customer’s biggest challenges, needs, and wants.
You have two departments, operating in silos, creating different messaging. This causes confusion and unnecessary frustration for the customer and makes the sales mountain even harder to climb.
We’ve had input from sales professionals who say some marketing campaigns land flat with customers. They’re either not tailored to the right buyer personas or they don’t reflect the issues customers are having.
This is why cross-departmental collaboration and communication—with an eye toward telling both sides of the story—are critical.
4. Get on the Same Page, Culturally
Ultimately, this may represent the underlying theme of these four steps. If you can get your departmental cultures aligned, then the rest will follow. You’ll find an aligned culture leads to better strategic alignment, better process alignment, and better content messaging alignment.
When cultural discord exists, sales professionals lament the fact that there’s little to no coordination between the two departments and no depth to the communication.
Sales and Marketing Alignment at The Brooks Group
At The Brooks Group, one way we combat misalignment is with regular joint meetings between sales and marketing and a steady stream of Slack and email messages. This gives both departments an equal platform to review a common scorecard, discuss campaigns, and constantly wrench the alignment paradigm even tighter.
So, what’s the risk of keeping your sales and marketing in silos? In short, everything. One study found that continued misalignment between these two groups can cost companies up to 4% in lost revenue every year.
Find out how training from The Brooks Group can help your team speak a common language and present your value proposition consistently.
