3 recommendations for effective sales and marketing alignment

CMOs and VPs of Marketing — This article is for you!

Let’s talk about the elephant in the room 🐘

Some of us know this elephant like the back of our hand…

I’m talking about the #conflict between #sales and #marketing.

Although this is a well-known issue, it has been escalating with the increased adoption of Marketing Automation, Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO), Funnel Analytics and Performance Marketing.

The positioning of the marketing department within the organization has been changed. Now, when marketing controls most of the buyer’s journey, it makes the conflicts with sales more and more complex.

Yes, this conflict does not exist in every company and doesn’t always rage at the same intensity, but that when it does exist, its consequences can be devastating to the organization 🤔

This is true for traditional B2B organizations, and even more so for B2B SaaS organizations.

Pointing fingers at each other is not a constructive approach…

Hereunder are 3 recommendations for effective sales and marketing alignment ➡️

1️⃣ Teach — invest time and teach your salespersons the fundamentals of marketing. Teach them what marketing does and how they can make more money with tighter integration with marketing.

And vice versa…

Dear marketeers — attend sales reviews, join client meetings, and know the real “client journey.”

Knowing how the final stages in the funnel work in real-life, requires familiarity with a set of sales activities that seems like a “black-box” for many marketeers: licensing and pricing; objections handling, payment terms, support, deployment, POCs management, legal adpects, tenders, supply chain. You name it.

2️⃣ Dance together — work closely with your sales force on Account Based Marketing (ABM), events, campaigns, content creation, social selling and more. You can multiply the impact of each touchpoint by leveraging insights from your sales colleagues.

3️⃣ Management — agree on mutual KPIs. By defining what is a “SQL” (Sales Qualified Lead) you can solve 80% of all problems. Set a clear and constructive work process that supports the alignment, invest in bonding…

On a personal note, I have based the above recommendations on my own experience as a sales manager and marketing manager (yes, I’m a two-headed monster…👹).

Switching from Sales to Marketing and back has given me a broad perspective on the end-to-end funnel and how to mitigate internal organizational bumpers.

Bottom line ➡️

Investing time and thought in the alignment between marketing and sales will guarantee your company more revenue at a lower Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC).

The 3 tips I’ve shared above are exactly the steps you need to take to foster transparency and harmony between marketing and sales.