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I presume you got to this page because you want to know more about sales & marketing alignment.  Perhaps you’re interested in a quick audit – some gem to prove your suspicion that your team simply could do better?

That’s OK, most business people feel the same.  We take up the mantle of sales and marketing jobs because we want to make things better – whether you’re on the sales side focused on more and bigger sales, or on the marketing side wanting to make a bigger impact and drive more leads.

Oops, I said it….

I mentioned “two sides” – the sales side and the marketing side.  Well, that’s how it is in most companies, and that’s what needs fixing. MarketingProfs stated that “Companies that have sales & marketing alignment have 36% higher customer retention and 38% higher sales win rates.”  And we’d all like that, wouldn’t we?

Selling into strategic accounts has always required a high degree of planning, a rigorous opportunity assessment process and the best (and most expensive) sales reps who can articulate your company’s strategy, vision and distinctiveness whilst distinguishing your products and services in the mind of the customer.

In many ways strategic marketing support has taken a back seat to the process of identifying the influencers and decision-makers, anticipating each stage of the buying process, analysing the competition and tuning into the buyer’s political issues. If the sales processes and planning are not executed correctly then firms whose market consists of only a handful of high profile companies will fail to achieve their objectives, waste vital opportunities and burn a lot of cash. Marketing can sometimes be viewed as a bit-player, playing second fiddle to the sales machine.

Why is it important for marketing and sales to be aligned?

Sales heaven is having a constant stream of high quality qualified leads landing in a CRM or email inbox on a regular basis. Even better is having not only lead data passed over, but a complete view of the buyers journey – what content they have downloaded, what web pages they have visited, what case study material they have received etc, and the qualification route they have taken before being passed over to sales. We call this ‘buyers insight’, sales should call this gold.  

“We have just passed the 1000 followers mark on Twitter.”

“My latest blog post had 500 views!”

These are the kind of metrics you might hear many B2B inbound marketers bragging about.

There is nothing wrong with tracking things like how many followers you have on various networks, or how many likes and shares your content is receiving. Those are important metrics for certain purposes.

But they are not a measure of success.