Before you can start bridging the gap between your business’ marketing and sales departments, you must first know – and care – about ‘the disconnect’.
This misunderstanding is frequently the very foundation of marketing and sales’ long history of conflict: because neither one truly understands the other, neither performs to their full potential. This can cause distrust, hostility and poor results – 43% of B2B executives believe that sales and marketing misalignment causes their companies to lose money.
However, when they do align (also known as ‘smarketing’), we can see great success. Numerous statistics suggest revenue growth, higher sales and better conversion rates all come from forging closer relationships. So why is it so hard to get sales and marketing to work together and what can we do about it?
Why is there a disconnect between sales and marketing?
Misalignment between the two teams generally arises from a lack of sharing – whether that be sharing a vision, sharing their needs, sharing information or sharing responsibility. We can break this down further into five key areas:
- Conflicting goals – Too often, each team is working towards a different end goal. If marketing wants to grow brand awareness and create demand whilst sales are only focused on meeting this demand, there’s an immediate disconnect.
- Lack of understanding – When each role isn’t properly understood, its intricacies aren’t appreciated and contributions can often be undervalued. For example, sales may ask for marketing collateral without realising the time and effort involved or marketing might not understand the tight deadlines that sales have to meet.
- Poor communication – Sharing accurate data is key to bridging the disconnect. Sales need to share their client insights so that marketers can produce relevant content and marketers need to show the outcomes of such efforts.
- Confused lead generation – Sales and marketing teams must agree on the definition and handling of qualified leads to maximise outcomes and avoid missed opportunities. If marketing’s criteria for a qualified lead doesn’t align with sales’ standards then both sides will become frustrated. According to a Hubspot report, only 9.1% of salespeople said leads they received from marketing were very high quality.
- Different personalities – With different behaviours and styles of working, sales and marketing personnel can easily clash. But if they’re brought together effectively, they can then learn from each other’s strengths, rather than working against them.
How to improve the disconnect between sales and marketing
Whilst marketing and sales may have different tasks, goals, strengths and weaknesses, their purpose is ultimately the same. As a result, they share aims and values, and should be encouraged to work towards them as one.
The trick is to provide the right environment for the two teams to comfortably collaborate with each other, sharing tactics and information along the way to drive greater revenue.
Encourage collaboration
Rather than working in silos alongside each other, sales and marketing should collaborate. This involves playing on one another’s strengths and filling in the gaps where there are weaknesses.
For example, sales needs marketing to deliver high quality leads, but marketing doesn’t work closely enough with clients to know their interests and pain points. They can only create the appropriate content to drive leads when sales provide the right information and insight.
Sharing this kind of knowledge doesn’t have to be complicated or time-consuming but the value it adds is considerable. It’s not hard to understand why increasing sales and marketing alignment brings such potent results.
Introduce a service level agreement (SLA)
Another way to encourage knowledge-sharing and closer working practices is to implement a service-level agreement (SLA). This is a formal document that defines a working relationship, establishing the expectations and goals of each party. It helps to break down barriers and create a shared view of the customer journey, and saves the time and resources that are commonly wasted on trying to solve disputes.
Your SLA should establish:
- What counts as a high-quality MQL
- How many MQLs marketing should deliver to sales in a specific period (per week/month/quarter)
- At what point marketing needs to provide sales with the lead hand-off
- The time period for the sales team to act on new MQLs
The effective use of CRM systems should also be included in your SLA. This is because, when they’re used correctly, they give users a holistic, real-time view of every customer, helping each department to make quick, well-informed and coordinated decisions. In fact, according to Hubspot, 74% of respondents said their CRM is effective at bringing sales and marketing closer together.
Sales and marketing alignment in the future
Although many of the challenges of aligning sales and marketing departments as closely as possible remain, there are some positive signs as we look to the future: 61% of sales professionals say alignment is more important now than it was last year.
It seems businesses are increasingly recognising that success comes when these teams work hand-in-hand, combining strengths and knowledge and pooling resources to take a more holistic approach.
In this new integrated dynamic, we’re predicting that demand-generation suppliers will act as valuable partners, helping to bridge the gap between sales and marketing. Their role is to provide both functions, with tools, insights, and strategies to drive demand and enhance customer engagement.
This includes:
- Data-driven insights into customer behaviour, market trends and preferences, which help sales and marketing teams refine their strategies and tailor their approach based on real-time feedback.
- Targeted campaigns in line with the sales and marketing strategy to ensure that lead generation efforts are focused on those most likely to convert.
- Data to evaluate the effectiveness of joint sales and marketing efforts to allow for continuous improvement and optimisation.
- Adapting strategies based on evolving markets and customer behaviours, in real-time.
- Suppliers who provide high-quality resources such as pre-built personalised templates and sequences for each lead are becoming increasingly valuable.
It’s becoming increasingly clear that greater alignment between sales and marketing is essential for business success. As such, we expect to see more companies encouraging closer working relationships and, as the lines between the departments become ever-more blurred, reaping the rewards.
Greater alignment between sales and marketing is just one of our predictions for the future of B2B marketing. You can read about our others here: https://weareinterlink.com/12-disruptive-predictions-for-b2b-marketing-in-2024/
