Have you ever heard about the importance of aligning your sales and marketing teams?
And have you witnessed a real collaboration between sales and marketing with your own eyes?
If all marketing playbooks out there stress the importance of mutual collaboration, it’s actually quite rare to see a real, trusted, true partnership between marketing and sales.
Yet, in times of efficiency, ensuring that your teams align their efforts in the same direction is becoming a necessity.
So, if your teams are not perfectly aligned yet, this is a problem you should urgently address if you want to succeed.
Let’s figure out why.
Because sales and marketing work toward the same goals.
Let’s take a step back for a moment.
What are you trying to achieve?
Your company has business goals.
To achieve these goals, you invest in marketing and sales, expecting a proper return on investment (ROI).
Simple, right?
However, you need your marketing and sales teams to work toward this direction to achieve these goals. Marketing attracts, nurtures, and passes qualified opportunities to your sales team, who then convert them into paying customers.
So, sales have quotas, and marketing has leads/SQLs/opportunities to achieve. That means that the number of opportunities needs to be sufficient to support the sales team in reaching their quotas. Again, it’s pretty simple.
But here are some controversial questions:
- Have you clearly specified your business goals? And when I say “specified,” I mean, are they:
- Specific: Are your goals clear and unambiguous, free from vague or open-to-interpretation language? Becoming the leader in one industry can be great but will not help your company focus on a proper direction.
- Measurable: Can these goals be tracked and measured through data, guiding your teams in the right direction?
- Achievable: Are your goals realistic, considering the available resources? Or are you asking your team to grow your business by 10 in 3 months without resources? Setting unattainable goals can demotivate your teams and undermine your goal-setting system.
- Relevant: Do your goals define what success means for your organization? Be diligent in selecting the right goals, and don’t hesitate to change them along the way if you realize they aren’t the right ones for you.
- Time-bound: Have you established a timeline for achieving these goals.
2. Have you effectively communicated these goals to your marketing and sales teams?
3. Have these sales and marketing teams specified their own goals that are aligned with your business objectives?
4. Did they collaboratively set these goals or at least approve them together? Ensure that they fully understand each other’s goals and the impact they have. For instance, if your sales team is focused on acquiring new Enterprise Accounts while your marketing team is focused on reducing Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC), make sure these objectives are not contradictory and that everyone comprehends the implications for leads, campaigns, nurturing time, and opportunity follow-up. You don’t want marketing focusing on low-cost SMB accounts while your sales team pursues larger opportunities.
5. Are these marketing and sales goals: Please repeat the 1. process
If your answer is “yes” to all these questions, congratulations! You’re already ahead of many enterprises out there.
If your answer is “no” to any of these questions, take action now!
This is how you can ensure that your entire company works in the same direction.
Clarify your business goals and communicate them clearly to your Marketing and Sales departments.
They must understand that they collectively need to achieve these business goals together.
The OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) system is a great tool for linking your business objectives with marketing and sales. You can also seek external support in setting these OKRs, as an external and neutral perspective can provide valuable insights into what constitutes success.
Because sales and marketing need each other to achieve success.
I’ve witnessed too many sales and marketing departments throwing faults at each other. If sales don’t meet their quota, it’s because the marketing leads are not sufficiently qualified. If the pipeline is not generated, it’s because the sales team fails to follow up with leads on time.
It’s time to put an end to these unproductive conversations and reunite people together.
First and foremost, prevent these conversations from happening. Foster open communication, mutual respect, and trust. Bring both departments together to discuss problems and create an environment where the focus is on finding solutions, not assigning blame.
Start by identifying the problem.
Is it the conversion rate? Which one? —trials to paid, opportunities to paid, or others? Do you have data that can shed light on these issues? Avoid relying on emotions or assumptions and stick to the facts and what you know. This approach will help you steer clear of unproductive discussions.
Once the problem is identified, work together to determine its root causes.
Instead of allowing the marketing team to point fingers at sales (and vice versa), ask each team to consider potential issues within their own department first. Then, explore other potential factors that could originate from different parts of the company, such as product-related issues. Once again, rely on data and avoid emotional responses.
If you lack data, take steps to gather it and validate your assumptions. Consider conducting A/B tests whenever possible and cost-effective.
For example, in the case of a low conversion rate from opportunity to paid in a SLG (Sales-Led-Growth) company, you can:
- Attract the wrong leads: Were your primary contact the deal champion? or did you nurture influencers? Examine your MQLs or SQLs data, especially the demographic score, to determine if you are generating qualified leads. Adjust your scoring system if necessary.
- Qualify the wrong opportunities: Is your BANT qualification method appropriate? Are your qualification criteria well-defined?
- Prolonged follow-up: How long did the process from opportunity to lost deal last? Were you sufficiently responsive to your prospects’ needs? Analyze the time it takes from opportunity to a lost deal and assess whether your team is responsive to prospects’ needs.
- Lost reasons: Investigate lost reasons directly from the prospects. You need to understand why they chose your competitors over you. This is pure gold for your marketing and sales departments.
Once again, stick to the data and ask your team to come prepared. Follow up the meeting with the data needed to understand the problem fully. Ensure that your Head of Sales and Marketing comes prepared with the necessary data to investigate the issue further.
Then, brainstorm how everyone can work together to address the problem:
- If SQLs are not at a sufficient level, consider adjusting your marketing activities, potentially increasing the marketing budget to target a more qualified audience. Communicate the potential side effects to ensure everyone is aware and can clearly communicate these changes to their teams. For instance, a reduction in the number of leads may be necessary to focus on higher-impact leads.
- If the opportunities are not of sufficient quality, adjust the criteria and communicate these adjustments to the teams. Ensure that marketing understands the impact on their lead generation strategy, BDRs understand the impact on their qualification process, and sales understand the impact on their lead sources.
- If the follow-up takes too long, determine if you need to hire new sales or adjust sales territories.
- If the reasons for lost deals are diverse, try to understand the primary reasons. Is pricing a major factor? If so, train your sales and marketing teams to enhance the perceived value of your product. Is there a missing feature on your product? Consult with the product team to determine if it’s on the roadmap and where adjustments need to be made—whether on the marketing side or the product roadmap. Is security a concern? Emphasize security in your sales and marketing messaging and consider adding PR, AR, and certifications to the mix.
These are just a few examples, and your business and processes may reveal other areas for improvement. However, it’s crucial to approach these investigations without emotional bias.
Because when sales and marketing communicate together, you'll enter a virtuous circle
Marketing attracts leads and nurtures them.
Sales follow-up with opportunities and convert them into customers.
Customers become ambassadors and attract new leads.
Is it really that simple? Yes, even in complex B2B Enterprise Sales.
When marketing and sales work harmoniously together, they can truly make a difference.
However, before this virtuous circle can function smoothly, marketing must gain a deep understanding of the field to inform their activities. They should better understand their Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs) and craft personalized marketing campaigns that resonate with the right audience.
Meanwhile, sales professionals are in the field, interacting with customers on a daily basis.
Let’s think for a minute. Sales can provide marketing with invaluable field insights, not only through feedback but also by inviting marketing to prospects meetings, introducing them to customers to generate customer stories, sharing lost and won deals data, and providing a clearer picture of how they communicate, what they do, where they go, and more.
With these insights, marketers can create personalized marketing campaigns that better resonate with their target audience. They can focus on strengths and mitigate weaknesses to generate better-qualified leads.
Bringing happy customers to the marketing team, who can then transform them into ambassadors and organize communication initiatives, is a goldmine of opportunity. To learn more about customer communication, read my last article, “Why Should You Include User-Generated Content (UGC) in Your Marketing Strategy.”
That means that sales can help marketing do a better job. Through fluid communication, sales can reveal behaviors, habits, pains, and concerns that can be real game changers in marketing strategies.
And what’s in it for sales? They receive better-qualified leads and close more deals, enabling them to meet their quotas more efficiently. They are happier and more motivated and follow up with leads on time.
As both departments achieve their objectives, this situation fosters greater trust within each department, improving relationships and communication and further enhancing the virtuous circle.
To achieve wonderful results.
Conclusion
While marketing and sales may be two distinct departments, they are tightly connected to each other.
As both work towards business growth, their objectives must align to ensure they are working towards the same direction.
Although marketing often thinks long-term and sales focuses on short-term achievements, both departments need each other to succeed.
When they collaborate harmoniously, they can achieve remarkable results.
In today’s challenging economic landscape, the synergy between marketing and sales is not just a strategy; it’s a necessity.
As marketing attracts, nurtures, and passes the torch to sales, and sales convert customers into brand advocates, the virtuous circle of success begins. When these departments communicate, collaborate, and align their goals, they achieve remarkable results that elevate the entire organization. So, let’s embrace this harmonious partnership, break down silos, and work together—because when marketing and sales join forces, they don’t just succeed; they excel.
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