Sales & Marketing Alignment

Ultimately, sales and marketing teams have the same goal: to generate business growth. But just because they share a common mission, that doesn’t mean they’re automatically on the same page. All too often, Marketing and Sales work in silos, without any idea of what the other team is up to. They don’t collaborate. They don’t agree on definitions or tactics. And these disconnects can cause serious pipeline problems.

MarketingProfs reports that, on average, Sales doesn’t follow up on 80% of marketing-generated leads … and misalignment is often to blame. So isn’t it time you made sales and marketing alignment a priority? Aligning your sales and marketing efforts will empower both teams, maximize resources and improve marketing-generated revenue by 208% on average, according to MarketingProfs.

What Misalignment Sounds Like

What do alignment issues look like in the real world? If you took a walk through a company with misaligned sales and marketing teams, you’d probably hear something like this:

Why doesn’t Sales just follow up on the leads we send them?
Marketing’s leads are no good!
What’s supposed to happen next with these leads anyway?

In other words, misalignment often sounds like frustration and finger-pointing. But the problem isn’t that Marketing and Sales are slacking off. It’s that they don’t share common goals or processes. And when your teams don’t have the same vision or shared tactics, they can’t work together to generate leads or drive revenue. So if any of these frustrations sound familiar, you could have an alignment issue on your hands.

eBook
Check out our proven tactics for getting your marketing and sales teams aligned to create a profitable demand generation machine.

Getting on the Same Page

Market Definition & Sizing

Want to know exactly whom to sell to? Our market definition, segmentation, sizing and mapping services will uncover your addressable market. From there, we’ll help ensure your goals are achievable and realistic, and develop a market penetration strategy for the specific buyer types you sell to.

Demand Forecasting

A steady flow of qualified leads is one of every marketer’s biggest responsibilities, and to help you get there, we’ll start with the end goal in mind. Our B2B marketing strategy experts will map your revenue goal onto the SiriusDecisions Demand Waterfall®, then calculate how many leads are needed at every stage to reach that goal.

Baseline Assessments

The first step toward sales and marketing alignment is simple: finding out where you stand. We determine both teams’ alignment baseline using our Marketing and Sales Maturity Diagnostic Assessment, along with qualitative measures like interviews and focus groups.

Sales & Marketing Alignment Workshops

No two businesses define a lead the same way — because “lead” isn’t a catch-all term. It’s a set of criteria that determines whether a prospect is buy-ready, and both teams have to agree on what that means. What makes a marketing-qualified lead? A sales-qualified lead? We’ll run a workshop to discuss these definitions and ensure both teams are speaking the same language.

Service-level Agreement (SLA) Development and Implementation

After defining a lead, it’s time to determine what Marketing and Sales should do with those leads. We’ll help you draft an SLA — a document defining expectations for both teams. This holds Marketing accountable for lead generation, Sales accountable for follow-up … and both teams accountable for revenue.

Additional Alignment Services

Even after setting up an SLA, Marketing will continue working with Sales for the long haul. We can help you create sales enablement tools that empower Sales, engage buyers and streamline the selling process, including…

  • Territory playbooks: searchable tools that filter prospect data based on criteria you select, so reps can quickly find top opportunities
  • Sales portals: all-in-one online hubs hosting the resources Sales needs to engage buyers
  • Quote and proposal generators: interactive tools that produce customer-facing proposals or quotes in seconds, eliminating manual effort
  • Collateral: engaging assets — direct mail, PowerPoints, product sheets, pricing guides and more — that give buyers the confidence to purchase

Ready to make a bigger impact by aligning current and new marketing efforts more tightly with your sales team? Get in touch. Our team can help drive the process.