How to Achieve Sales and Marketing Alignment for Performance

Sales & Marketing alignment is key to achieving effective processes that convert. Check out how you can improve the disconnect for growth.

A common problem in many businesses is the disconnect between the marketing and sales teams. While the two are closely related, in many organizations, there are sales and marketing alignment gaps that can affect processes, performance, and ultimately revenue.

Proper alignment can support growth and ROI with improved efficiency. If done well, sales and marketing alignment could generate 208% more marketing revenue for your company. It’s best to analyze your current teams and highlight any discrepancies between the two so the business as a whole can operate better.

In this article, we’re going to identify consequences that can arise from a lack of sales and marketing alignment, and how to take steps to make sure your teams are working in tandem towards the same goals.

Potential Consequences of Misalignment

The downfalls of having misaligned sales and marketing teams can be significant, without being obvious. We’ll go over a handful of likely drawbacks that could occur and how it creates a chain reaction.

Lost Leads

With the marketing team actively trying to attract leads, it’s key that those efforts be followed up on. The first pitfall involves leads that are attracted, but left to dry and eventually lost by the sales team. In fact:

• Sales ignores up to 80% of marketing leads, instead spending half their time on unproductive prospecting

This is crucial considering the business’ success is largely dependent on gaining quality leads. There’s a good chance that top leads are falling through the cracks because the sales team is preoccupied with the wrong tasks or are not aware of the leads coming through the pipeline. ROI then takes a hit due to the all around frustration from wasted efforts.

But it’s not always the case that the sales team is dropping the ball. When Marketing and Sales aren’t properly aligned, the definition of a “qualified” lead can differ between teams. Your marketing team may be defining certain leads as qualified, while your sales team sees them as a waste of time. This is why setting criteria through lead scoring is so important — if there is consensus on what a qualified lead is, you avoid real prospective buyers slipping through the cracks and improve the efficiency of both your sales and marketing functions.

Higher Cost of Leads

In relation to the last point, lost leads can create large sunk costs that could have been avoided. Marketing teams likely execute a set budget for attracting leads, and do so strategically. At the same time, sales teams often have limits as to how many leads they can handle and nurture at a time. Misalignments can create an imbalance where excessive leads are reaching the sales team or where quality leads aren’t being properly nurtured given the cost to attract them. In a sense, the cost per lead goes up, because while 10 leads were acquired for $X amount, only one was nurtured; still costing $X amount.

Loss in Productivity

More obvious than the others, but productivity can take a major hit from misalignment. With the teams on different pages, time among other resources can be wasted. This often leads to staggered processes, some taking longer than others when it should all be unified.

At the same time, developed marketing content and sales data can be under-utilized due to the lack of communication, further contributing to the increased costs and reduced ROI.

Key Points for Successful Sales and Marketing Alignment

Aligning Goals

The first and arguably most important is to align goals between teams. Working towards a common goal makes it much easier to work at the same pace and see eye-to-eye. A core process behind aligning operations is lead scoring. Tracking and identifying using a lead scoring template can clear up when a lead is sales-ready, and can tighten up the gaps between the teams.

Linked Workflows

Having intertwined workflows can help iron out small discrepancies to avoid larger issues. Shared definitions can mitigate communication hurdles and set thresholds. It can also create markers for when a lead is ready to hand-off from marketing to sales to make the process smooth. Identifying Sales Qualified Leads and Marketing Qualified Leads can also make the distinction clear for when each team should step in.

Customer Personas

Customer personas can, like lead scoring, put both teams on the same page. Again, the idea is to set a common denominator so it is clear what an ideal lead looks like and how to handle it based on pre-established personas.

Coordination & Communication

Constant communication is a no-brainer for achieving sales and marketing alignment. Whether it be meetings or workflows, involving members of each team can clear up confusion and overall paint a clearer picture of how the other team operates. Consistent interaction can also open realistic deadlines, allowing better coordination and assistance where needed. At the same time, this opens up easy feedback flows which each team can use to learn and improve.

Keeping the same line of dialogue will also open conversation on dependencies and strengths of each team. With this, adjacent teams can understand where they need to step up and where they need to communicate for a helping hand. Communication is a fundamental piece that supports every other point. Sometimes, opening basic dialogue can solve even the most complex issues a business or team is facing.

Need help putting this into practice? Get in touch.