Once upon a time, marketing was considered the department for “party people”, flamboyant advertisements and a source of umbrellas on a rainy day. Across the hall, sales could be heard vigorously defending their product down the line to an ill-informed customer. Meetings between the two departments were hostile, critical and achieved little.

Sound familiar? Hopefully most organisations have moved on from this scenario and acknowledge the benefit of a strong marketing team that contributes to sales goals.

But what are the challenges that marketing and sales must together overcome?

  1. According to MarketingSherpa, 61% of B2B marketers send all leads directly to Sales; and only 27% of those leads will be qualified. Sales blame the marketing department for poor quality leads. Marketing blames sales for not following up with the generated leads. The result? Unproductive prospecting and low ROI resulting in weak pipelines.
  1. One of the biggest challenges facing marketers is the creation of truly engaging, relevant, valuable, consistent content. Content that sales reps are desperate for in order to drive profitable buyer action, but often don’t know how to find. Too often, out of sheer frustration, they end up creating their own promotional material and presentations. Not only is this an inefficient use of sales time, but also potentially detrimental to an integrated brand image across communication channels.
  1. B2B buyers set high standards for insight and knowledge from sales professionals. Executives perform online research as their first course of action. They are tech savvy, conduct their own competitive analysis and want a solution, not a product. They seek out thought leaders who understand their pain points. In contrast, cold-selling can be disruptive and lacks the personalised approach that most buyers prefer.
  1. Many B2B companies are sales driven, with reps having little or no idea of what marketing actually does. And when sales do become aware of a marketing effort, it is usually met with exasperated eye-rolling. How often do you hear, “They don’t understand what our customers want”? Or “Why didn’t they speak to us first before releasing that YouTube video; organizing the golf day; agreeing to the trade show?” This lack of collaboration wastes untold time and resources. Although both groups share the goal of increased revenue, often the tactics are way out of sync.

What does all this mean for your business?

Most businesses – 67% according to Marketo and Reachforce research – benefit from a close sales-marketing alignment. By aligning stakeholders in the sales cycle (sales, marketing, business development) and encouraging more effective collaboration, strategic planning, goal setting, and joint accountability, your business will see an increase in closed deals.

So, how can your business implement this partnership in order to better attract, engage and close deals?

  1. Solid lead generation strategy.

Depending on your business goals, marketing can use any of the myriad of metrics that are on offer, such as marketing qualified leads (MQL) and cost of customer acquisition (CAC). These can help marketing define how many potential customers you are reaching, whether they are engaged with the brand, and ultimately how many leads are being generated. For example, using a set of agreed upon scores, marketing will be able to isolate warm leads to pass on to sales.

Another approach would be a marketing-sales service level agreement (SLA). This could govern the process a lead goes through before and after handoff, ensuring accountability and enhanced productivity.

  1. Documented sales-marketing strategy

Aligning sales and marketing can be as simple or complex as your business requires.

Joint sales and marketing meetings is one of the easiest ways to build alignment. If marketing and sales have shared targets and understand each other’s challenges, and plan campaigns and content together, this will maximise the productivity of both teams.

A centralised, automated, shared technology system allows sales and marketing to capture interaction with customers and leads. Through software or even simple Google Docs, teams can share prospect and account activity to ensure total transparency.

  1. Leverage content from buyer interaction

Sales are your frontline. They encounter firsthand the most common objections from prospects, know the customer’s pain points, overhear rumours of industry changes. It’s so simple. “How do I?” emails become a series of blog postings or video, pain points turn into a case study, industry challenges form the basis of an eBook, white paper or infographic.

With sales and marketing collaborating on content production, marketing automation software can ensure it is distributed to the right prospect at the right time.

Sales can distribute content manually by publishing authoritative content on social media channels. But the content must add value, should not be product-oriented and should offer a solution to a problem prospects may be facing.

Sales can also help to customize the standard content items meant for the mass market to key individual accounts. Account-based marketing (ABM) may engage and retain more customers by sending targeted, personalized and timed communications.

Most executives acknowledge the benefits of achieving a well-aligned team of sales and marketers that don’t (too often) indulge in an exchange of fire across the hall. This is not the end of the rocky road however. This long-term goal will achieve true integration of these traditionally separate entities, delivering a marketing and sales system that efficiently and predictably turns suspects into sales.

To find out how we can help your business achieve a successful marketing and sales alignment, please contact us here.

images-3