Sales & Marketing Synergy: How to Achieve Alignment For Success

According to Hubspot’s state of inbound report, only 22% of corporate employees would consider their organization’s sales and marketing relationship tightly aligned. When Marketing and Sales resort to a blame game, the customer stops being the priority and results suffer. So how do you address the disconnects and achieve alignment for success?

The Disconnects

Before we understand how we can best work together, it’s important to address what commonly causes sales and marketing disconnects. The good news is, they are mostly people problems that can be solved with self-discipline:

• Assumptions: Sales assumes marketing is on social media all day, marketing assumes the sales team isn’t considering the carefully researched messaging tactics in their communication with potential clients. Communication leads to understanding and helps reveal new perspectives to remove assumptions and create a positive feedback loop. 
• Arrogance: It’s no surprise ego can easily come into play when mingling these two high-performing teams. Mutual respect is a key step towards alignment. Knowing how to best rely on each other leads to true greater company benefits.
• Wasting time: There is a constant struggle of prioritizing what’s most important from a resource and time allocation perspective, and what’s going to bring the most value overall. When both sides plan properly together and follow through on their roles and goals, everyone can win.
• Close-mindedness: Sometimes people can get comfortable in habits and formulas and refuse to embrace new ideas for research or new markets to test. No matter which side you are on, thinking outside of the box and being open to new ideas is key to innovation and growth.

Achieving Alignment

In order for your business to grow and prosper, it’s important to make sure sales and marketing are aligned with all stages of the customer’s buying journey. Here is what it looks like when marketing and sales work together:

• More data: Information flow is crucial for improvement. Both teams need data to analyze what is working so the results can be amplified. Discussing cost per lead, close rates and value of customers among both departments is crucial.
• Higher quality leads: The more communication and data, the better the strategy and tactics to bringing in more qualified leads. Identifying quality new business and knowing where it came from increases the opportunity to go get more of the like.
• Respect for both practices: There is an art to each of these important job functions that are best to appreciate and learn from. Growth is an endlessly iterative process.
• Support through the entire sales process: The messaging and timing of communication in the sales process is important and can be specific and automated to help nurture and close. Allowing marketing to assist in the full sales funnel allows the sales team to get closer to a close.

We’ve been in organizations where sales and marketing have a rub. We’ve been in organizations where sales and marketing departments work hand in hand in alignment. We don’t have to tell you which is more successful. Get in touch and let us help you achieve sales and marketing synergy.