Everyone seems to agree that alignment is essential to influence team impact and reach a unified approach to business growth. Then why is it that sales and marketing alignment remains a frequent topic in a B2B world? Both marketing and sales teams have the same goal - to drive sales and revenue, So, why not do it in sync? Is aligning sales and marketing teams the answer to increasing revenue potential?

How to get both teams on the same page?

If you don’t ask you will never know. Without regular communication and visibility into how the other team works, what matters to them, and what gets them up in the morning, there can be little progress. Having regular syncs in place is necessary to keep track of shared goals and to talk freely about workflow, obstacles, and wins. Open communication between the two departments, especially now when we are working in a hybrid world, ensures that each team has a voice when defining strategies and developing content to maximize the impact at each stage of the buying cycle. Clear communication also helps to avoid putting effort into the production of something nobody will use.

How to drive better results?

Having a shared operational center will simplify communication and unify both teams around shared goals and insights about a targeted audience. This way there is “always-on” transparency about customer progress through the funnel and there are insights available about what works and what doesn’t. When you look at customer engagement technology provides you with a guide to consistently execute and apply the modification to the execution according to customer behavior. All, while providing more relevant interactions and trying to solve customer problems and thus influencing the velocity of a deal closing through purchase.

How to generate good quality leads?

Marketing can generate hundreds of MQLs on one occasion, but sales can’t talk to every lead. So, they may decide to follow up on recycled opportunities instead and complain that marketing leads aren’t qualified enough. When there is an agreement in place about how leads are scored, the handover process, and how fast sales should act on them, both teams can operate more efficiently and ensure a timely response to the promising leads generated. The process is improved through time but it takes feedback and learning from each other.

How to demonstrate ROI?

Sales want to have the deals closed quickly. They worry about reaching the quota and closing a big deal sounds attractive. Marketers look at increasing recognition, stimulating conversion as well as scoring and nurturing leads for the long haul. Alignment ensures credit is given where it’s due. Tracking and measuring the impact across all sales and marketing systems enable transparency and demonstrate how investments are impacting the bottom line. When marketing and sales teams drive towards the same goals, ROI dramatically improves, as does sales productivity, and ultimately, the revenue.

How can marketing and sales teams learn to win together?

An aligned approach is a shared system of communication, strategy, and goals that enable marketing and sales to operate as a unified organization. It means leveraging sales insights to spot new trends and it also means building on sales experience when developing new inbound campaigns This way marketing can develop exactly the type of content the sales team knows will work and thus be more relevant without the risk of being outdated or producing materials that don’t matter and will not be used.

Alignment in this context also means changing how we collaborate, and how to keep people engaged while creating a space where they interact, talk, and network with each other, to be more effective and perform better together.   

How businesses communicate with their customers throughout their buying journey has fundamentally changed in the B2B world. Sales and marketing alignment is really about the customer When new customer blends in seamlessly with sales and marketing cycles, they are left with an extremely valuable experience that can result in a purchase and repeat growth. Sales and marketing alignment is the goal of the two teams working as one, with stronger collaboration, more transparency, better communication, and greater efficiency to convert leads into customers and achieve stronger sales and profitability. Much depends on the relationship and those take time and effort.