Are you experiencing your sales and marketing teams fighting like cats and dogs? Then you might want to listen up! This week we’re discussing the best ways to create sales and marketing alignment.
What is Sales and Marketing Alignment?
If you feel like there is tension between your sales and marketing departments, you’re not alone. Reportedly, “roughly 90% of companies say that their sales and marketing teams are not aligned” (Source: Marketing Profs, 2015). Aligning your sales and marketing departments is becoming more necessary, however, the benefits of doing so often go undervalued (Source: Common Places, 2015).
Aligning these departments can have a lasting impact on the success of both, and your company overall. Sales and marketing alignment can be defined as “bridging the information gap between marketing and sales” (Source: Mind Matrix, 2015). Each department has the capacity to support the other with actionable insights for stronger campaign management, lead generation, and etc. (Source: Common Places, 2015).
Closing the information gap helps marketers create material that sellers want to use throughout the sales process. Meanwhile, forward insights (marketing to sales) enable more persuasive sales interactions. For example, if your marketing team understands how and when a prospect likes to communicate, they can pass this information on to the sales team to help them better target communications. The heart of true sales and marketing alignment is greatly dependent on an open flow of information between the two departments (Source: Mind Matrix, 2015).
Think your sales and marketing teams are working just fine unaligned? Think again. Misalignment can have a serious impact on marketing ROI, it slows growth, and it inhibits strong conversion rates (Source: Marketing Profs, 2015). This week we analyze four ways to create stronger sales and marketing alignment by looking at:
- The Importance of communication
- How to Define a Common Strategy
- The Need for a Sales and Marketing Services Agreement
- Why Data is Important to Sales and Marketing Alignment
[RELATED CONTENT] Sales and marketing alignment is one of four major strategy considerations we suggest any company implement in their sales and marketing for the future. Interested in having a look? Click the link below to download our FREE e-Book Chapter on The New Approach to Sales: Adaptive Trust-Based Sales.
Concentrate on Communication
Importance of Communication
Communication is the basis to any relationship. It can both resolve and create problems (Source: Selling Power, 2015). In this case, not having open lines of communication can lead to misalignment. Aligned sales and marketing teams begin and end with communication, no matter how much technology you use, if your marketing and sales teams can’t speak the same language or exchange information, you’re bound to experience misalignment (Source: Act-on, 2015). When it comes to communication, information should be flowing freely between the two departments. Instead of thinking of sales and marketing as two different departments, you must now think of them as a partnership (Source: Callidus Cloud, 2015).
Achieving Communication
One way you can create more open lines of communication is through regular meetings. Having your marketing team participate in sales kick offs, weekly meetings, and even sales presentations will help create more consistent and open dialogue while developing awareness into the other’s operations. The outcome is greater appreciation for customer pain points (Source: Callidus Cloud, 2015).
One of the biggest challenges that the marketing department faces is gaining real-time data on prospect interactions with your company (Source: Mind Matrix, 2015). Without knowing the information that buyers are looking for at various stages in their decision journey, content created by marketing relies on misinformed assumptions, like shooting blind. In fact, 60-70% of B2B content created by marketing teams goes unused because the topic is irrelevant to the buyer (Source: Type A Communications, 2014).
Having open lines of communication with marketing teams will lead to the creation of more relevant content for sales presentations. Keeping marketing up to speed on what is happening in the sales department means they can deliver the right materials to the right people, at the right time, which in turn will help reduce wasted marketing investments (Source: Mind Matrix, 2015).
Find the subject of the buyer’s decision journey to be of interest? May I suggest reading our post, “The New Decision Journey and Appropriate Digital Content Strategies”.
Create a Joint Strategy
When it comes to creating an effective marketing or sales strategy, it’s important to have both departments working together cohesively, as opposed to along-side each other (Source: Common Places, 2015). To reduce the chances of butting heads, creating a joint strategy can help align the goals of both departments.
Cohesive Audience Definition
A common disagreement between sales and marketing teams is determining the target audience. Companies can enhance their sales process by having both departments define buyer personas together (Source: B2C, 2015). A buyer persona is defined as a conceptual representation of your ideal (and current) customer, based on market research and data about your current customers (Source: Hubspot, 2014).
If you’re interested in learning more about buyer personas and how to create them, may I suggest reading our post, “What is a Buyer Persona and how does it Influence Digital Content”.
Sales and marketing often have a different view of their target audience and this is largely due to the fact that their scope gives them a different perspective of the audience. Sales gets to know buyers through their pain points, whereas marketing gets to know them through buying behaviour. By working together and having a clear understanding of your buyer personas and sales targets, you will avoid frustration for both departments (Source: B2C, 2015).
Having an aligned sales strategy is also beneficial to your buyer. Studies show that “organizations with tightly aligned sales and marketing functions enjoyed 36% higher customer retention rates” (Source: Type A Communications, 2014). Strong retention rates are an indicator of relationship building efficacy, and enhance marketing contribution to revenue (Source: Maximizer, 2015).
Perfecting buyer personas takes time and a lot of effort on behalf of marketers. Interested in learning how to perfect your buyer personas? May I suggest reading out blog, “Buyer Persona Best Practices for your Sales Process”.
(Image Source: Modern Marketing Today, 2015)
Determine a Procedure for Delivering Leads
A common area of misalignment is lead acquisition and nurturing. Marketing works to generate leads for sales teams, however many of these leads go unused. As stated by reports, “sales reps ignore 50% of marketing leads” (Source: Type A Communications, 2014). In order to acquire better leads, marketing and sales must define a lead generation strategy with shared definitions (Source: Marketing Profs, 2015).
Once a lead is generated by the marketing team the next step is to make sure that it is qualified. According to Type A Communications, 61% of B2B marketers send all leads directly to sales; however, only 27% of those leads will be a marketing qualified lead (MQL) (Source: Type A Communications, 2014).
So how do you prevent marketing from sending leads to sales before they’re even ready? It starts by getting both teams to outline a set of procedures for delivering leads that coordinates decision journey awareness and specifies the exact point in which the lead is a MQL (Source: Common Places, 2015).
Many marketers believe that their role is done once they have passed a lead to the sales team. The truth is, a marketer’s role is far from being complete. Sellers need marketers to continually create digital content for the nurturing process. Due to a lack of lead nurturing, 79% of marketing leads never convert into sales (Source: Type A Communications, 2014). Digital content marketing acts as ammunition for nurturing, and marketers should note that the insights that come from this post-MQL engagement provides data on real buyers, not perceived target markets.
Getting sales reps to use the right content at the right time also depends on the right set of customer facing tools. Content management platforms like sales enablement are an effective way to provide sales teams with the relevant tools and content they need, in real time, and accessible on any mobile device. Having access to contact information, presentations, and data out in the field can give sales reps the tools they need to deliver the dialogue customers expect. Sales enablement can also help align marketing and sales teams as it allows for the opportunity to grow your pipeline. Sales reps no longer have to focus on repetitive and time-consuming tasks and can instead focus on one-to-one interactions with your customers.
Are your sales reps not using your content to its full potential? Find out why in our post, “3 Reasons Sales Reps Aren’t Using Digital Content Created by Marketing”.
Create a Sales and Marketing Service Agreement
Creating a written agreement between your sales and marketing teams is one way to ensure alignment. Creating a contract will not only ensure that both parties carry out their assigned roles, it’s a great way to set and benchmark goals. A sales and marketing service level agreement (SLA) is a documented list of responsibilities agreed upon between sales and marketing (Source: Chron, 2015).
Measuring the success of your efforts can get confusing when you have two different parties involved. By defining what goals and metrics each team is responsible for, it’s easier to examine how each supports the other in reaching the defined goal (Source: Common Places, 2015). Finally, defined goals improve alignment, efficiency, and accountability in operations (Source: Marketing Profs, 2015).
Arguably, creating a SLA can also be quite motivating, especially for marketers. While sales teams are no strangers to having to meet revenue targets or quotas, for the most part, many marketing departments aren’t held to the same goals. Giving marketing a specific numerical goal in a SLA holds them accountable to the same motivation as your sales team (Source: Common Places, 2015). Aligned SLAs in sales and marketing also lead to a more aligned funnel process overall (Source: B2C, 2015).
Want to learn more about sales enablement? May I suggest heading over to our previous post, “What is Sales Enablement? A Sales Enablement Definition for 2015”.
Measure, Analyze, and Learn From Data
Looking at small details in your data can be incredibly helpful in aligning your sales and marketing teams. In most companies, both departments collect their own data in some form or another. Sharing this data can be extremely helpful as it gives insight that the other department might not have access to. For example, giving sales teams access to data about lead generation criteria can help to smooth the nurturing process, as future interactions will be contextually relevant (Source: Dun & Bradstreet, 2014). This data can help sellers determine what content a prospect has already seen so they can move them forward on their decision journey, not backwards (Source: Dun & Bradstreet, 2014).
Closed Loop Marketing
Closed loop marketing is a term that is often used by marketers. It refers to “marketing that relies on data and insights from closed loop reporting “(Source: Hubspot, 2012). In order to successfully reap the benefits of closed loop marketing, you must be committed to broader sales and marketing alignment.
Connecting your CRM with a sales enablement software can help close the loop in your reporting and keep both departments up to speed (Source: Common Places, 2015).
With the help of integrated sales analytic software, real-time reporting can help you to close the loop in your digital content marketing consumption. Mobile sales applications record data from sales calls and instantly send it to your marketing team.
Sales enablement gives your sales team the ability to improve and enhance your buyer’s decision journey from the first face-to-face interaction to the post-sales call follow up.
Choosing the right metrics for your company isn’t always easy! If you’re struggling to chose the right metrics for you, may I suggest reading our post, “How to choose the right metrics for your sales process”.
Getting your sales and marketing teams to work together cohesively isn’t an easy task, nor will it happen overnight. However, taking small steps towards alignment will help you transition both departments towards working together as a partnership.
[RELATED CONTENT] Sales and marketing alignment is one of four major strategy considerations we suggest any company implement in their sales and marketing for the future. Interested in having a look? Click the link below to download our FREE e-Book Chapter on The New Approach to Sales: Adaptive Trust-Based Sales.
