Sales and Marketing Alignment Explanation
in a perfect world, sales and marketing would function in complete harmony, collaborating with ease to drive revenue growth However, in reality, the relationship between sales and marketing can be tenuous, with siloed sales and marketing teams deeply enmeshed in their own processes and oblivious to what their counterparts are doing.
Your sales and marketing teams should be working in tandem like the offensive line of a football team. In far too many organizations, sales and marketing function as entirely disparate teams rather than working together towards the same end goal—driving revenue.
In the B2B game, sales and marketing’s win record is inherently tied to their ability to work together.
According to the Aberdeen Group, highly aligned organizations achieve an average of 32% year-over-year growth, with their non-aligned competitors experiencing a 7% decrease.
The stats don’t lie; sales and marketing alignment is crucial for a game-winning strategy. But the complicated dynamic that can exist between sales and marketing teams can’t be fixed overnight.
A proper sales and marketing alignment strategy should be deeply ingrained in your workflows, touching every step of the sales and marketing process. From content to lead nurturing to reporting, sales and marketing alignment needs to be a key focus throughout your organization.
But, what is it Sales and Marketing Alignment?
Sales and Marketing Alignment Definition
Sales and Marketing Alignment is the goal of enabling your sales and marketing teams to work with better communication, transparency and collaboration in order to achieve greater efficiency. The ultimate end goal of Sales and Marketing Alignment is to get higher quality leads to enable high-profit sales at an increased rate.
Basically, more revenue.
“Sales and Marketing alignment is rated as the most important success factor to achieve revenue goals.”
In short, Sales and Marketing Alignment is refers to sales and marketing teams that share goals, KPIs, resources and use streamlined processes to focus collectively on the larger, sustainable goal of efficiently increasing revenue, simple as that!
The key to Sales and Marketing Alignment is communication. Better communication, better results.
But, getting sales and marketing on the same page is one of the biggest challenges we see when creating new processes and streamlining sales funnels. These two departments should work hand-in-glove, but they often wind up in an adversarial relationship.
For most companies, this problem starts with basic communication. Like any good relationship, communication forms the foundation for better understanding and an improved relationship.
Poor communication can largely be blamed for the lack of synthesis between sales and marketing. Long-standing communication issues cause friction and confusion, hindering clarity and contributing to the divide between sales and marketing. Along with technology, improving communication should be a foundational element of your Sales and Marketing Alignment strategy. Better communication can help bridge the gap between sales and marketing; as such, your communication betterment efforts need to be considerable.
The simplest solutions often offer the best results. Improving sales and marketing alignment often starts with the development of common terms. Instead of referring to all responses to a marketing effort as leads, it is important to create terms and levels of qualification for each response. Since each department has a different definition of what constitutes a lead, this can help both sales and marketing agree on, and more effectively act upon, opportunities.
in short is Implement Service-Level Agreements (SLAs) in your Lead Management Process.
If sales and marketing lack common definitions, especially when it comes to terms related to the sales funnel (leads, MQLs, SQLs, opportunities, customers, etc.), then your other attempts to improve alignment don’t really matter. If sales and marketing are working with the same metrics but have different conceptions of what those metrics mean, this creates confusion and downright resentment (at worst), especially when the pressure to generate revenue is mounting
SLAs should cover:
What can be considered as a marketing-qualified lead (MQL);
What can be considered as a sales-accepted lead (SAL) and sales-qualified lead (SQL);
How many MQLs sales should expect to receive from marketing;
How the lead handoff process should be handled, including who will be alerted, how, and when;
Sales follow-up process, including timeframe and contact attempts;
What to do with expired MQLs, SALs, and SQLs;
Next steps for unresponsive leads
Sales and Marketing Alignment isn’t something that can be built from the ground up. Despite how motivated sales or marketing teams might be to achieve better communication, their efforts will be fruitless without support from the top down. Getting leadership on board is essential to streamlining your sales and marketing processes. Championship-worthy teams don’t make it to the big game without stellar leadership and coaching to pave the way, click here to see the MBS Program - Sales and Marketing Alignment Training to aligned your team →
“Getting leadership on board is essential to streamlining your
sales and marketing processes. ”
When your Sales and Marketing teams are aligned, your business can close more deals in less time by focusing your efforts on your best opportunities. Sales teams receive better-qualified leads and will be able to better qualify these leads themselves, allowing them to focus on just the highest quality. Empowering your sales team to focus on the most profitable objectives creates a healthier pipeline, increasing the rate of revenue growth overall. Sales teams can respond to leads more quickly, engage customers more effectively, and boost the company ahead of their competition.
What happens when marketing and sales are not aligned?
Misaligned or unaligned processes in sales and marketing cause havoc and inefficiency. The costs can be considerable for example, what are the costs associated with chronic sales forecast inaccuracy? It can lead to people losing their jobs. What are the costs if a competitor beats you to market? If you’re chasing poorly qualified leads, what are the costs of the wasted time? If a campaign or website has to be redone because marketing and sales weren’t on the same page strategically, what are the costs? And misalignment causes friction. Friction grinds away at people. Friction removes the incentive for high performance and innovation. Click here to Start Assessment of Sales and Marketing Alignment →
“Misalignment between sales and marketing costs B2B companies 10% or more of revenue loss annually.”
Benefits of Sales and Marketing Alignment
Every business is looking to improve their return on investment of their sales and marketing activities. Leads can be very expensive to generate and improving conversion rates can be better than increasing the number of leads if your company wants to hit it’s objectives.
According to Aberdeen Research and Strategy, companies with properly aligned teams generate 32% higher revenue and retain 36% more customers.
If your sales and marketing team is aligned and working towards shared objectives they will be able to seamlessly pass leads between themselves to ensure that prospects are nurtured and opportunities are not lost. When sales and marketing share structures, systems, and rewards, the entire business benefits.
For example, sales and marketing alignment can improve staff engagement or eliminate revenue stagnation. Here are a few of the key benefits:
Greater cohesion between sales strategies and marketing strategies: Marketing and sales teams focus on critical, forward-thinking tasks that drive revenue or increase lead generation, among other goals.
Increased cooperation and resource sharing: When these two teams develop and implement shared metrics and good communication processes, budgeting becomes more flexible and less competitive. Productivity increases without additional investment.
Effective use of leads: With proper communication and shared systems, teams can effectively generate, nurture, and hand off valuable leads without losing information in the process.
More scalable playbooks: Alignment allows your sales and marketing teams to design and execute initiatives that increase revenue while increasing efficiency.
For sales and marketing, “winning together” isn’t just a metaphor; sales and marketing literally win when they are closely aligned by driving revenue. Sales and marketing alignment can seem like something to put on the bench while you focus on the real game—closing deals—but sales and marketing alignment actually makes that game better and more effective.
If your team is inching towards the end zone but can’t seem to score, sales and marketing alignment is likely the play you need to implement in order to pull off the win.
