What are sales and marketing alignments?
You’ve probably heard something about Smarketing, haven’t you?
This expression is a joining of two words, ‘sales’ and ‘marketing,’ and it alludes to the coordination between sales and marketing with the goal of boosting business success.
Smarketing involves constructing a combined set of objectives that enables both teams to work together as a single entity.
Traditionally, the sales and marketing divisions would function independently of one another. Marketing departments were the ones responsible for initiating contact with potential leads at the beginning of the process. The objective was to draw in new leads. Meanwhile, sales personnel were in charge of the final part of the process, which entailed receiving leads from the marketing team and ultimately completing sales.
But buyer’s habits have changed:
- Now, 80% of B2B purchase cycles are complete before the buyer considers contacting your company.
- 68% of buyers prefer online research to communicate with your sales team.
- And 90% of buyers won’t even answer your cold call!
Aside from that, your clients are connecting with your business regularly – before they buy something from you and afterward when you have completed a transaction. It appears as though the traditional approach of using marketing and then sales as successive steps is no longer effective.
Smarketing is a new business reality
Smarketing is similar to a parent-child bond, with both sides working together to ensure the customer’s needs are met. Every parent imparts something to the other, while both cooperate to create a shared way of behaving.
Let’s translate it to the sales and marketing alignment.
A marketing team supports a sales team by:
- Making buyers aware of a company and its product
- Nurturing and qualifying leads
- Consistently engaging customers
- Providing data about the market and competitors.
A sales team, in their turn, contributes to marketing by sharing information about:
- Sales process efficiency
- Market dynamics
- Customer health (pain points and needs)
- Ideal customer profile
They intersect for:
- Building transparent goals and objectives
- Ensuring smooth handoff between marketing-generated leads and sales
- Maintaining a positive customer experience
- Making cross-functional contributions to the go-to-market strategy.
Signs of Marketing and Sales Misalignment
1. Your marketing department only cares about MQLs.
Troy Arias, the Marketing Operations Manager at Daxko, believes that many marketing teams are incorrectly selecting the KPIs that will provide the best connection between marketing and sales. He pointed out that if your marketing team is concentrating just on a specific MQL measure, it will be a significant obstacle to collaboration between divisions.
MQLs are often seen as a way to measure the success of marketing efforts, however, this doesn’t take into consideration how much the sales department contributes to this. The success of a sales team is determined not by how many leads they get, but by how much they succeed in transforming those leads into paying customers.
The most important way to gauge the success of a sales team is to look at their closed bookings, which are usually much lower than what is in their sales pipeline. After an initial MQL assessment, the customer must turn into an SQL, be recognized as a viable chance, and get an offer offered prior to the sale being finalized.
This creates a huge difference in the objectives of different departments, placing most of the strain on the sales department rather than marketing. If your marketing team’s main concern is just creating Marketing Qualified Leads and not closure on transactions, then they will not be held responsible for putting forth just average leads.
For this scenario, it would be beneficial to have your marketing team establish a revenue target, based on booked sales, to make sure that your advertisers factor in your sales team when assessing potential clients and take the additional step to stay in sync.
2. You don’t have consistent interdepartmental syncs to address results and planned campaigns.
Making sure to keep lines of communication open is essential when endeavoring to coordinate your sales and marketing activities. If you want your teams to be in agreement, you can’t isolate them from each other. They have to meaningfully interact with each other consistently.
The sales team should be able to talk about the outcomes they are getting from the leads that marketing is providing. Both parties must comprehend one another’s approaches and tactics when it comes to exchanging messages. If you have a specific plan for campaigns, both teams must understand what they have to give and receive from one another.
In the end, it is important to keep a strong connection between each department. If you don’t act, it is possible to create a divide which results in incorrect marketing activities and a lack of cooperation between members of your sale and marketing divisions.
3. Your marketers never ask, “What can I do to make the sales process easier for you?”
Sometimes, considering other perspectives and showing genuine concern can help bridge the gap between the sales and marketing teams. One approach to achieving that goal is to have the members of your team actively come up with tactics to speed up or improve the sales cycle and lead the conversion process of your firm.
The responsibility of initiating conversation around how to better the process lies with marketers due to them managing the beginnings of any smart marketing efforts. If the marketing team takes some time to comprehend how their sales team is managing the marketing-qualified leads sent to them, changes could be made to ease the sales process.
From that point, your teams can begin a productive and positive discussion about what they need or anticipate from one another. At a minimum, it conveys that your marketing team desires to pay attention to your sales team and maintain both teams operating in a unified group.
4. Your sales department creates and uses its own sales content exclusively.
Marketing departments frequently have to generate material to assist with sales efforts – such as case studies, slide shows, and summary documents. Sales content is distinct from content used for marketing purposes.
Promotional material is more wide-reaching and eye-catching, but sales material is tailored to the company and has a more precise focus. It should be noted that the expression “sales content” does not imply that only the sales department is responsible for this type of collateral; marketing departments often develop it as well. If the marketing team has no input in the process, it appears that the various departments are not working together.
Marketers usually possess the right skill set to make content, since it is a major part of their job. If the sales department is taking over that responsibility, it is likely a sign of a strained relationship or poor connection between the two departments.
Ways to Fix Poor Alignment
1. Encourage teams to listen to each other.
In order to make sure that your sales and marketing teams are working together harmoniously, they must to take the time to really listen to one another and understand what the other is saying – even though this is a bit of a cliche. Both divisions should gain a thorough comprehension of your sales procedure.
If they do not, neither will be able to give the kind of thoughtful and effective advice necessary to enhance the role of each department in the process. Sales and marketing must take the time to understand each other’s point of view—listen and become educated until both can completely understand the complete details of the sales process.
Carrying out this action can help to resolve some of the issues mentioned above. If your groups are eager and capable of properly paying attention to what the other has to say, then they can obtain the understanding, facts, teamwork competencies, and lengthy-term goals needed to unite the divisions.
2. Push for consistency in expectations, data, and technology.
Achieving alignment between marketing and sales is a significant component, and a key to its success is upholding steady communication. Make sure that your teams have the same basic facts and are working toward the same objectives.
That concept raises the inquiry, “How can one remain consistent?” To initiate, continual dialogue must be exercised in combination with frequent encounters and updates among divisions.
3. Consider your sales team’s input in content marketing.
It is likely that your content marketing efforts are larger than they need to be. You could be preserving and publicizing material that doesn’t actually assist your sales representatives.
Creating content that will improve and benefit your customers’ professional lives is desirable. Offer your prospects information that is enlightening and holds their attention. This often takes being well-versed in their desires and interests, something that salespeople can supply.
The marketing department should involve some salespeople in the content creation process if they want to make sure they put out material that the sales team can benefit from. This is because salespeople comprehend what appeals to their potential customers and customers.
By doing this, you are allowing your sales team to point the focus of your content toward the right track, giving them access to leads who are interested in what you are providing, developing peaceful cooperation between different sections of the organization, and making it so that both the departments have a vested interest in the other’s endeavors.
4. Agree on a buyer persona
You won’t be successful if the sales and marketing teams have a divergent perception of your target customer. Marketers have done an admirable job looking into customer information, they have possibly done an even more remarkable job by involving them with your company. It is likely that these individuals have not talked with possible customers and are unaware of their genuine demands and difficulty points. Well, sales do.
In order to guarantee that both teams have a unified outlook when it comes to their customer’s full experience, they should come to a consensus about the particulars of the buyer’s identity.
By way of example, marketers can take advantage of analysis to construct a rudimentary target customer persona, which can then be sorted out after sales have their feedback. Instead, sales and marketing can collaborate on a constantly updated, accessible buyer persona document that is available to both teams.
5. Maintain a consistent marketing message
It is unwise to let marketing messages and sales pitches about your product or service differ, as this can lead to confusion.
An inconsistent presentation of your message will create an unfavorable opinion of your business in the eyes of your clients. 21% of B2B marketers think that inadequate alignment between sales and marketing is one of the main causes of bad sales.
Make sure that both groups are conveying the same marketing message to potential customers. Marketers will use it as a way to get the attention of their crowd, while sales will highlight and re-emphasize the most relevant points of the product or service during their presentation in order to seal more deals.
It is essential to keep in mind that your marketing materials should focus on the customer and accurately represent the advantages you offer. It is essential for sales reps and marketers to be aware that their primary objective is to provide value to their customers, not just do whatever they can to get them to open an email or buy a product.
6. Facilitate constant communication
To get connected, sales and marketing should stay connected. Consistent collaboration is a guaranteed method of preventing both teams from becoming isolated from one another.
This is how you can arrange constant communication between teams:
Hold onboarding Smarketing meetings
Once a fresh salesperson has been added to the team, introduce yourselves and explain the role of marketers in aiding the sales staff. Also, commence swapping guidance on ideal methods immediately.
Let marketers attend sales meetings
Attending sales meetings will enable marketers to gain insight into sales targets and quotas. In addition, it would be a great chance to collaborate on content ideas.
Arrange meetings for managers
It is essential to have monthly gatherings for sales and marketing executives in order to keep the two areas in sync. Leaders should convene to review statistics, identify any roadblocks, and create collective objectives for the upcoming month.
Having a Service Level Agreement (SLA) that specifies each team’s respective duties is necessary for productive team meetings.
Arrange casual meetings
Allow your sales and marketing departments to have time to congregate beyond the typical work area to build a greater feeling of camaraderie, whether it be for special sales or marketing events or a recognition of the success that your firm has achieved.
8. Share Reporting
Smarketing isn’t only about setting goals together. It’s also about monitoring the progress that has been made toward reaching these objectives.
When considering how to make sure that your sales and marketing operations are synchronized, consider noting shared key performance indicators and demonstrating the knowledge of both groups in an open manner. By doing this, you will spot any flaws in the client acquisition process and work with each other to enhance the major indicators, which will consequently raise profits.
Marketing and Sales Alignment is a Must for Businesses
Are you curious to know if marketing and sales alignment is really imperative? Is it really necessary for my business to take the time to ensure that those sections are working together harmoniously?
The answer is “Absolutely! Yes! Yes! A thousand times yes! Yes, again!”
It is incredibly vital to align marketing and sales efforts, just as this article suggests. Not understanding it has a negative impact on all aspects of your business, not just one area.
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