How to Integrate Alignment Between Sales and Marketing
Sales and marketing alignment is a shared system of communication, strategy, and goals that enables marketing and sales to operate as a unified entity. Working together, aligned teams can deliver high-impact marketing activities, boost sales effectiveness, and ultimately grow revenue.
Sales and marketing team alignment makes a lot of sense, and in most small-sized professional services firms, they go hand-in-hand. But as companies continue to grow, it’s not uncommon for sales and marketing to fall out of sync, and this can lead to significant losses in visibility, profitability, and growth.
Sales and marketing teams that are well-aligned and open to sharing data result in 36% higher customer retention. The lack of alignment between sales and marketing has led to business failure across the globe. This has led to wasted budget and resources as up to 60-70% of B2B content is not being used and close to 75% of marketing leads never convert into a sale.
By successfully aligning sales and marketing, you can attain the following;
Generate 32% higher revenue, Retain 36% more customers, Achieve 38% higher win rates (Aberdeen Group)
Importance of Sales and Marketing Alignment
To help you understand why it’s important to align sales and marketing, imagine that your marketing department is busy creating messages, content, and other materials to make your business more visible to clients who might be interested in it.
However, the marketing team hasn’t met with sales to learn about the unique pain points and defining characteristics of the clients who are the most likely to purchase your services. This lack of communication between sales and marketing is a problem because it can lead to marketing efforts that send the wrong message, bring in the wrong leads, and don’t show off the best parts of your brand.
Therefore, the importance of sales and marketing synchronization cannot be overestimated across all sectors of small, medium, and enterprise businesses. By having the full sales and marketing teams in alignment, each side can learn so much about what works and what doesn’t. You get deep insights into your key buying personas, your target audience, their buyer journey, and the things they want to hear.
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7 Strategies to Integrate Alignment Between Sales and Marketing
- Ensure Open Collaboration Between the Departments
It is almost impossible for teams that don’t work together to align. Sales and marketing leaders, alongside their teams, should meet regularly to track shared goals and communicate freely about workflow, obstacles, and wins. This in turn will foster a collaborative environment rather than a fragmented atmosphere.
Deliverables must be clearly stated and the role of each Smarketing (sales and marketing) team member should be clearly spelt out.
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- Explore a Revenue Operations Strategy
Implement a revenue operations strategy that serves all teams equally. This can be initiated by creating a cross-functional department and exploring the possibilities of successful work synchronization.
- Clearly Define What Every Terminology in the Sales Process are in Your Organization
Marketing and sales must have the same definition of quality leads. What marketing qualified leads (MQL), Sales Qualified Leads (SQL), Prospects, and Deals are must be clearly stated, and the role of each Smarketing(sales and marketing) team member should be clearly spelt out.
- Work Together to Define an Ideal Buyer
Both teams need to have the same knowledge of the target market. Putting their heads together to make an “ideal buyer profile” (IBP) helps marketing teams create content and come up with strategies for converting digital media into leads that are more likely to buy.
- Develop Key Performance Indicator Between the Two Teams
Design KPIs stating clearly the expected deliverable from both sides of the equation so that marketing knows how many marketing qualified leads sales expects per time and sales know what actions must be immediately taken once a MQL comes down the funnel.
- Incorporate Marketing Solutions And Tools for Efficiency
Apply the use of one or more sales tools to track your leads and facilitate controlled and visible movement through the entire funnel. Examples of such solutions include;
- Marketing Automation
- Email Marketing
- CRM
- Marketing Analytics
- Social Media Management
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- Leverage Dashboard Reporting for Real-time Visibility Into The Funnel
Once you have all the communication and workflow tools defined and in place, build a dashboard for real-time reporting on all levels of marketing and sales activity. A transparent look into your funnel lets you make data-backed decisions across the entire sales process, leading to an increase in sales and achieving long-term success.
Conclusion
The importance of sales and marketing alignment cannot be overemphasized by any forward-thinking organization that desires revenue growth. Would you or your company need help with aligning your sales and marketing teams or/and equipping them with the right tools and solutions to effectively execute their deliverables? Speak to us today.