Why Aligning Sales with Marketing Is So Important

Let us guess: you’re here because your sales consistently fall short. And to make matters worse, Marketing and Sales blame each other for missed goals instead of joining forces.

Malaise is relatively common. One in four companies believe these two departments are not aligned, and while 75% believe there is “some sort of alignment”, only 17% believe they are highly aligned.

If you are part of the 83% with an alignment deficit, either you haven’t recognized the true importance of SMarketing (Sales + Marketing), or you have some misconceptions.

The interdependence of Marketing and Sales

The first thing you need to understand is that SMarketing is the joining of efforts of two teams with different skills – and not the transformation of two teams into a homogeneous team. The two functions are different, but we need to recognize theire interdependence.

As Sales are the ones who deal directly with the Customer and are well aware of their pain points, Marketing benefits from these insights to optimize campaigns. On the other hand, as Sales depend on the leads generated by Marketing to achieve their goals, they need to provide Marketing with the necessary information to design the profile of ideal customers and obtain qualified leads.

It becomes clear that, although the secondary objectives are different – as we will see later on – the team’s objective macro, which is to generate revenue for the company, and that is why it is so imperative to join efforts.

The risks of lack of alignment

The lack of synergy between these sectors inevitably results in a loss of business opportunities. It is estimated that only 37% of misaligned companies achieve sales objectives.

This happens because, without this coordination, Marketing ends up capturing leads with the wrong profile. This generates a domino effect in which sales end up wasting time chasing fruitless deals, while “hot leads” are lost in a pipeline full of unfit leads, that is, those who are not interested in your offer.

The impact of this is negative. The company is faced with very high customer acquisition costs, distant sales targets, and, deep down, an unsustainable business.

Definition of functions and moments of interaction

For there to be synergy, it is necessary to clarify the functions of each team and at what moments they should interact.

Firstly, Marketing communicates with a vast public and its competence is to guide Marketing actions – as much as possible –toward the fit public. Marketing departments often have a limited budget, so they don’t have the luxury of “shooting in all directions” and seeing what works.

So, the role of Marketing is to define buyer personas, identify the channels where they are present, and shape the message in such a way that it captures the attention of people with the pains/needs that the product or service solves.

Then Marketing develops the mechanism that allows you to turn website visits into leads. Producing didactic and informative content and building an image of authority and trust, can transform leads into prospects and pass them on to sales.

When into Sales play, they are no longer dealing with a vast audience, but qualified leads – or sales-qualified leads, SQLs. Marketing has already carried out a filtering process, during which it has educated the customer and established a certain amount of trust so that sales have more chances, but it is the salesperson who finishes.

Here, the Sales specialist uses his arsenal of communication tools – email, telephone, videoconferencing, messaging, social selling, face-to-face meetings, etc. – to gain the prospect’s attention and trust.

Then, the role of the sales specialist is to highlight, with great power of argument, the characteristics, benefits, and value proposition of each product or service and make the connection to the pains that the prospect feels.

Sales and Marketing Alignment

We’ve already seen that Sales follows Marketing on the purchase journey and how they contribute to each other’s success. But what specific aspects should be aligned?

- The ideal profile of Client and buyer personas. Salespeople communicate directly with Customers and must share the knowledge they acquire “in the field” to help Marketing capture better leads: what role they play, the size of the companies they work for, professional sector, age group, gender, interests, preferences about the sources of information they use, pains, the content they seek, etc.
- Registration of information and use of the CRM. middle Marketing is responsible for nurturing leads at the beginning and of the funnel; knows which contents, pages, and emails they interacted with and which products or solutions they evaluated. This information must be recorded in the CRM, as it is essential for sales to create the so-called “rapport” and convert.

- Lead qualification and Lead scoring. By jointly defining what constitutes a Marketing Qualified Lead and a Sales Qualified Lead, as well as lead scoring parameters, Sales are more likely to communicate only with those truly interested leads.

- Definition of KPIs. It is important to define the Marketing KPIs (traffic, leads generated, emails opened, etc.) and the Sales KPIs(sales growth, average ticket, number of sales) separately. But also include the end-to-end conversion rate, that is, the number of sales made that came from the opportunities created by marketing.

- Definition of complementary goals. Sales cannot achieve its objectives if marketing does not guarantee a certain number of qualified leads. Therefore, a fundamental part of SM marketing alignment is to determine lead generation goals based on sales needs.
AgreementLevel. All the previous points (plus those that make sense in your organization) are signed in a Service Level Agreement (or SLA, Sales Level Agreement), a document that defines the responsibilities and expectations of each team, guaranteeing complementarity.

Conclusion

Why is it so important to align sales with marketing? We dare to say that the most correct question is why NOT to align sales with Marketing, since they are so interdependent and that they do not work without each other.

Process, Sales