87% of sales and marketing leaders believe that collaboration between their teams is essential for business growth. 85% say alignment between sales and marketing is the largest opportunity for improving business performance (source).
So, surely businesses everywhere should be embracing the change and making this happen?
With 9 in 10 sales and marketing professionals saying they are misaligned across strategy, process, content and culture, perhaps many people just believe it’s too hard (source).
We disagree. We think sales and marketing alignment is far easier than people would be inclined to believe.
Businesses have been attempting to align their sales and marketing teams for decades. Much like a parent, that loves all their children equally, each department has a place in the customer journey, and brings different elements of value. The trick is to make sure the customer gets the best of both of worlds – receiving a cohesive, valuable experience.
When businesses successfully align their sales and marketing efforts, then can expect a 32% increase in revenue year on year (source), potentially more.
So, how does aligning your sales and marketing teams improve customer experience, reduce costs and drive revenue?
1. It reduces inefficiencies
This may not seem like a big deal, but when inefficiencies cost organisations as much as 30% of their annual revenue, the reality is that it’s pretty important. Imagine what your company could do with an additional 30% budget for customer acquisition, digital marketing initiatives or customer research.
Duplicate actions and poor processes incur these costs. They also lead to customer confusion, reduced sales and irritated staff.
When a company focuses on improving and streamlining their customer journey, they decrease their expenditure, reduce lost opportunities, improve employee motivation – and grow their turnover.
2. It aligns goals
When we look at the bigger picture, no matter whether you’re a sales or marketing professional, you’re out to provide a solution to a customer need.
An aligned business strategy should start with common goals, KPIs, quotas and criteria, which leads into jointly agreed programmes and campaigns, targeted at the same audience(s). It should finish with commonly understood measurements and metrics.
If the teams are following a vastly different set of benchmarks, it can make it harder for both departments to meet their goals. Conversely, if both teams mutually agree with the goals they’re working towards, they’re statistically much more likely to meet them.
United goals create harmony - an environment of smooth working. Sure, the teams can work in different ways, but their end goal should be the same.
3. It provides better qualified leads
Sales teams know their customers better than anyone else in the business (sorry marketers, it’s true!), so having them gather as much important customer information as they can, and then share it with the marketing team is the best way to target your audience with relevant messaging and generate more qualified leads.
When sales spend their time getting to know customers personally, they acquire fantastic insight that can (and should) be shared with marketing to produce higher-quality content that will be more engaging to potential new customers.
In a less functional environment, sales teams often blame marketing for not producing quality leads, while marketing complain sales get lots of leads, but they don’t covert them. So, when they communicate more closely and work together – they can dramatically improve lead quality and conversions.
If both teams also look to implement a lead scoring method, with an easy-to-use CRM, then they can focus on targeting well-qualified leads, to close sales faster.
4. It keeps you one step ahead of the competition
As part of their job, marketers constantly monitor and investigate strategies and techniques used by the competition – so they can stay one step ahead of the game. But, if this is not relayed to the sales team then the information is somewhat useless in terms of growing revenue.
There is an easy fix. When working together, marketers can make the sales team aware of competitor strategies, allowing the sales team to properly address benefits when speaking with customers, in comparison to the products competitors are promoting.
5. It helps create better content
Sales teams rely on materials produced by their marketing colleagues. Whether it’s brochures, website content, presentations, or proposals. When marketing teams know what their customers want, by talking to their sales counterparts, they can produce engaging support material, that can help close the deal. By understanding customers better, both teams should have shared ownership of the tasks in hand, to deliver a more cohesive and valuable customer journey.
How to align your sales and marketing team in four easy steps
- Map a comprehensive customer journey – by creating a customer journey map, both sales and marketing will understand their roles within the customer experience, as well as the entire journey. Structure every touchpoint to create a cohesive process, that everyone understands.
- Share your goals – When both teams know what process they’re following, they can co-operate and achieve their goals even faster. Ensuring both parties to work towards the same targets in their own ways is the most direct path to success.
- Get to know each other – Working collaboratively takes some work. So, it’s worth both teams getting to know each other. Meet regularly to re-assess the customer journey, pain points, and what’s working well.
- Use a comprehensive CRM that encompasses marketing activity – just like your sales and marketing teams, using a digital platform that combines marketing with your sales CRM creates a powerhouse. It’ll give both teams better customer insight to help drive outstanding ROI.
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