Aligning Sales and Marketing Teams with Lead Analytics
For years, sales and marketing teams have operated in silos, but this strategy is no longer viable. In fact, research shows that brands with sales and marketing alignment enjoy 20% annual growth, whereas those with poor alignment experience a 4% revenue decline.
Thus, for businesses to thrive, proper alignment between sales and marketing teams is vital. Although only 22% of companies have succeeded, it’s not as tricky as it sounds! Here, we’ll explore how the marketing approach varies from sales and why 78% of businesses fail to align their teams.
Further in the article, we’ll delve into the seven best strategies to promote collaboration between sales and marketing with lead analytics to ensure sustainable growth. Let’s get started:
Sales vs. Marketing: What’s the Difference?
Before we dive into the intricacies of sales and marketing alignment, let’s uncover the basics. Marketing teams focus on developing brand awareness through multiple channels and strategies. Their primary goal is to generate high-quality leads.
On the contrary, sales teams are in control of engaging with prospects to convert the buyer’s interest into sales. Thus, they are responsible for transforming leads into long-term buyers.
Why Sales and Marketing Teams Fail to Align?
Although marketing and sales teams need each other to succeed, there is often tension. For instance, sales may feel that the former needs to provide more quality leads, whereas marketing may believe the latter needs to follow up effectively.
Thus, to avoid conflicts, businesses must align the two team’s approaches and goals. But before that, it’s essential to understand why sales and marketing alignment fails:
No Specific Goals- Companies need clear objectives to ensure both teams are on the same page, thus eliminating confusion and ensuring success.
Forgetting to Define Metrics- Sales and marketing teams must agree on shared metrics to discover new opportunities and avoid hindering collaborations.
Absence of Segmentation- Another reason marketing and sales alignment fails is that they focus on creating a one-size-fits-all approach. However, through segmentation, businesses can deliver tailored buyer journeys.
Unclear Value Proposition- Businesses that lack clarity around sector-wise value propositions can obstruct sales and marketing alignment. Not only will your brand struggle to gain traction, but your teams won’t be able to communicate effectively with consumers.
Top Seven Strategies to Align Your Sales and Marketing Teams with Lead Analytics
Let’s now explore seven proven strategies to align your sales and marketing departments effectively:
Align Your Customer Personas
Your marketing department has a clear understanding of your target audience, but how familiar is your sales team? Generally, your sales knowledge of your ideal customer relies on their experience and business goals.
The absence of clarity around your target audience between sales and marketing teams can create confusion and hinder business growth. Thus, it’s crucial for marketing to communicate the type of customer they are targeting clearly.
Furthermore, to promote open communication and appropriate understanding of the target audience, businesses can leverage web analytic tools. That way, you can track user interaction and validate the knowledge that both teams have built.
Determine Joint Key Metrics
Sales and marketing must define milestone metrics and goals to measure the impact of their efforts. In fact, a study found that 90% of sales and marketing teams agree their strategy, approach, and culture need to be aligned.
Thus, smarketing teams need to identify joint areas for improvements, such as increasing the number of qualified leads and closed deals. Furthermore, the departments must collaborate when establishing metrics, such as email open and bounce rates.
Look at the Big Picture
Businesses need short and long-term goals to ensure successful sales and marketing alignment. However, the issue arises when the former focuses only on the short-term impacts while the latter looks at the long-term benefits.
Thus, to encourage efficient smarketing and sustainable business growth, the teams must find the middle ground to ensure the best of both worlds.
Take Advantage of Software
Insightful research shows that 45% of sales professionals and marketers believe they must have the same tools to ensure alignment success. With similar innovative tools, business teams can create a seamless sales funnel and ensure open communication.
When it comes to choosing software, sales and marketing teams must focus on state-of-the-art tech that facilitates collaboration, real-time campaign tracking, and pattern identification in customer behavior. That way, the departments can identify trends and gain info on social media and email marketing campaigns to make data-driven decisions and ensure better outcomes.
Furthermore, sales and marketing teams can leverage CRM and marketing automation software to automate repetitive tasks, manage customer data, enhance communication, and generate more leads!
Invest in Strong Leadership
For businesses to ensure effective sales and marketing alignment, they need a leadership team that is well-invested. That way, if you hire a new member, business leaders can get them integrated into smarketing strategies as soon as possible.
Although companies need help converting existing team members, establishing a robust onboarding process ensures recruits are well aware of sales and marketing alignment strategies.
Create a Service Level Agreement
Sales and marketing teams that create an SLA clarify the responsibilities of each team. It’s not just a piece of paper; it’s a promise to deliver on the specified expectations, such as total leads generated or the response team.
Therefore, with a service-level agreement, your business can promote accountability and transparency between the two departments and ensure you hit key metrics.
Open Your Feedback Loop
Your job doesn’t end at aligning the sales and marketing teams! To ensure you’re leveraging the best strategies, smarketing departments must look at customer feedback, aka listen to the Voice of Customer.
Sales professionals and marketers can achieve this during sales calls, through customer satisfaction surveys, and customer service outreach emails. The result? You can uncover your target audience’s pain points and motivations to fuel new and better marketing messages.
What’s more, you can utilize this information to identify why consumers flock to your brand and prefer your products or services.
Use Consistent Marketing Messages
There’s no better way to lose a lead than having the marketing team call a product one thing, and the sales professionals refer to it as another. The mismatch and lack of clarity can create confusion for prospects, creating a poor first impression, reducing brand trust, and forcing customers to look at competitors.
Don’t believe us? The research found that 21% of B2B leaders cited poor sales and marketing content alignment as a detrimental factor, resulting in a “poor impression.” Thus, departments need to reinforce the same messages to close more deals successfully.
Why Your Business Needs to Align Sales and Marketing with Lead Analytics?
Insightful LinkedIn research reveals that 87% of smarketing leaders believe collaboration between the two teams is crucial to business growth.
But that is not all! Here’s why businesses need to align sales and marketing teams:
Enhances Lead Quality
Aligning sales and marketing teams encourages collaboration, resulting in increased lead generation and improved quality. Additionally, departments that capture high-quality leads can boost conversions!
Simplifies Your Workflow
Most sales and marketing professionals use different software, metrics, and goals, which leads to complexities and hinders business growth. On the contrary, promoting collaboration and sharing insights can drive leads and simplify daily tasks.
Improves the Customer Experience
Businesses that align sales and marketing teams ensure consistent messaging and a seamless customer experience. A bonus is that you can shorten the sales cycle.
Boosts Your ROI
Challenges in aligning sales and marketing teams can impact your reporting. However, smarketing that focuses on establishing joint KPIs can directly affect your ROI.
The Final Words
Aligning your sales and marketing departments is tricky, but it’s vital to reaching business goals and boosting revenue. The best way to ensure effective collaboration is to create a unified content strategy, leverage innovative technology, and identify analytics.
Apply these seven tips to enhance your marketing tactics, determine the best practices, and drive better business outcomes.
