Whether you work in marketing, with an internal team or use an agency, the principal of Marketing is always the same – it is a process.
The process is pretty simple, it’s about communicating the right message to the right person at the right time.
But how can you be sure that your organisation is doing just that? Your marketing team will be looking at the data, whereas your sales team will be actively speaking to your audience day in, day out. How are they going to be confident that they’re communicating not only the same message, but the right message to the right people or what is really influencing the buying decision, what the push backs are if they’re not communicating with each other?
Each team may have their own sets of targets, but the bottom line is always the same: to grow the business. Organisations whose teams are operating independently of each other are at a major disadvantage to those that work together.
The Scottie Pippen to Michael Jordan, Robin to Batman, Goose to Maverick, Watson to Holmes, Andy Cole to Dwight Yorke.
Bring your two star players together and forge a partnership that’s going to grow your business. You may think that’s all well and good to say, but still be wondering what exactly is Sales and Marketing Alignment…
What Is Sales and Marketing Alignment?
Sales and Marketing Alignment is the very essence of growing your business in today’s reality. Both departments have the same goal of driving sales and revenue to grow the business, yet often they’re not in partnership and operate independently of each other with only the occasional weekly update email being passed between the two departments.
Alignment is possibly the biggest opportunity you have at improving business performance internally. Uniting your teams will drastically improve marketing ROI, sales productivity and overall growth. Organisations with good “sales and marketing alignment” practices in place generated 208% more revenue from marketing efforts.
If you can remove the barriers between your teams, establish systems and help them achieve alignment, you’ll be seen as the genius within your business, maximising the value of every, single lead that comes in.
The Changing B2B Buying Reality
Gone are the days of a hard sell, turning up to someone’s doorstep unannounced and pitching your sale (I think we’re all happy about that). Technologies change and people are more connected to the world, consumer buying behaviours have evolved as a result.
77% of buyers agree that purchases have become very complex and difficult, complex buying decisions lead to a longer sales cycle. B2B leads are now more likely to engage with a sales rep much later on in the funnel than they used to. They, much like yourself, are happy to spend time researching their options during the interest stage and through to the consideration stage.
They don’t want a sales pitch, they want help and advice. Marketing needs to nurture them, provide them with information that addresses their challenges and goals. Who better to provide that insight than sales? That alignment achieves what we mentioned at the beginning, the right message to the right person at the right time.
Interestingly, from HubSpots 2018 State of Inbound report only 26% of businesses believe their teams are tightly aligned, and a further 47% believe they’re generally aligned. What’s more is that in the 2017 report, it found that C-Level execs believed their teams were tightly aligned, whereas their managers and team members beg to differ with a quarter finding their teams to be at best, rarely aligned.
(HubSpot State of Inbound 2018 Report)
How To Align Your Sales and Marketing Teams
You’re probably expecting an “how to” section to start here right? Well, you’ll have to check back next week for that insight! So, keep an eye out for our next blog on How you can align your sales and marketing teams. Bookmark this page or better yet, sign up to our mailing list and you’ll get it straight to your inbox once it’s live, just drop your email in the box below.