Expert marketer explores how sales and marketing alignment can work together and showcase ROI.
Demonstrating marketing’s contribution to sales becomes increasingly urgent, especially in uncertain times, so Capterra asked for my opinion on this pressing issue ahead of their sales and marketing alignment survey. The results are exciting and insightful, offering a sneak peek into the successes and challenges of the sales and marketing feedback loop. The survey explores why alignment is still such a challenge, as well as what you can do to build close relationships with your sales team.
The collaboration between sales and marketing should be a no-brainer, so why haven’t all companies adapted to make it a best practice? The reality is that sales and marketing think and behave differently. In addition, they also have different approaches to achieving the same goals.
Here are the key differences between sales and marketing:
Marketing focuses on the top of the funnel, while sales relentlessly hone in on the bottom of the funnel.
Marketing creates its own campaigns based on buyer personas, while sales concentrates on accounts.
Marketing reaches out to users, while sales targets the primary decision-makers of their accounts.
Marketing “nurtures” prospects through various campaigns, while sales “hunts” prospects.
Marketing’s mindset is long-term, while sales may need to meet monthly and quarterly quotas.
With these key differences in mind, it becomes clearer why aligning sales and marketing is so challenging.
Capterra’s 2023 Team Alignment Feedback Survey* validated the current state of sales and marketing alignment: only 48% of marketing professionals working for midsize businesses indicated that they feel somewhat (22%) or very (26%) aligned with individuals holding sales roles at their company, while 52% indicated their marketing team is somewhat (40%) or very misaligned (12%).
If you belong to the 48%, kudos to you. Keep up the good work. If you belong to the 52%, know you are not alone.
Sales and marketing alignment is a must in uncertain times
Based on Capterra’s survey, I was surprised that only 44% of businesses with aligned marketing and sales teams strongly agree that their company can clearly demonstrate ROI for marketing campaigns or initiatives; however, this is in comparison to only 20% among businesses with misaligned teams. So while I thought this percentage would have been higher, aligned teams were, in fact, more than twice as likely to strongly agree they are able to clearly show ROI, a meaningful difference . Ultimately, this makes sense. If your marketing only focuses on brand awareness, thought leadership, or MQL demand generation, it can be challenging to demonstrate marketing’s impact on sales and revenue, even though sales and marketing ultimately align.
Given the current macroeconomic environment, Capterra’s survey also investigated how layoffs might impact this calculus. A majority (87%) of marketing professionals indicated that their company conducted one or multiple rounds of layoffs in the last 12 months, which aligned with a series of layoffs beginning last year.[1] Interestingly, the survey found that 59% of respondents said layoffs had no impact on demonstrating ROI, while 31% said layoffs created a positive impact on the ability to demonstrate marketing ROI.
Furthermore, the correlation between team alignment and layoffs is apparent, as businesses with misaligned marketing and sales teams are more likely to have conducted multiple rounds of layoffs (53%) in the last 12 months compared to those that indicate they are aligned (16%).
Taken together, these insights indicate that building sales and marketing alignment is vital moving forward.
7 steps to unite sales and marketing efforts
1. Fully integrate demand gen process from marketing automation to CRM
Based on my experience working with many clients, I’ve also found that many companies’ MQLs are not fully tracked down in CRM (customer relationship management) software so that marketing can easily see the full flow from MQL, to SQL, to Demo, down to pipeline opportunities, and deal-won.
2. Ensure marketers are familiar with CRM
Yes, we need to know how to pull information from CRM if we support sales. We can create our own dashboards in CRM, and we can look at sales dashboards on a regular basis. Work to understand why some MQLs were not closed, and then analyze the data to determine if marketing can do anything to bend the odds in our favor or change the tide.
Know that CRM is necessary for modern marketing. It gives us insights into various accounts and MQL performances. It also helps us formulate an opinion regarding marketing’s performance against sales revenue.
Analyzing the data can be mundane and boring (I know firsthand), but the hard work will give us insights into how we can provide more value to sales from a marketing’s perspective.
3. Develop joint initiatives through account-based marketing (ABM)
Another common sales and marketing alignment is account-based marketing (ABM). Most marketing campaigns tend to catch prospects by casting a wide net, while ABM focuses on strategic accounts by fishing prospects with spears.
Any ABM effort requires sales collaboration because they need to provide feedback on the accounts that marketing should target. “Win-back” campaigns are standard for marketing to own with sales’ input. Many accounts have been dormant in CRM software without engagements from sales. These may be identified as opportunities lost due to a lack of budget or management interests, but they may still be interested in your products or services.
Through a collaboration with sales, marketing can kick off “win-back” campaigns by crafting tailored and integrated plans to reach out to these accounts and gauge their interest in sales; thus, you create additional prospects for sales.
4. Label sales-centric content based on sales stages for easy access
Another way to make sales’ job easy is to help them find content when they need it.
Source and set up sales’ content management library and tag sales content with sales’ search criteria
Train them to search for content to find the right items at the right time.
Being able to fish for appropriate content is an invaluable skill.
During my sales enablement workshops, many marketers shared that using a sales-centric content management library is worth it to take the next level of alignment with their sales team. According to them, these platforms may be costly but merit the price tag.
5. Leverage software for effective sales and marketing collaboration
Depending on how you collaborate with sales, marketing must source the necessary tools to bridge online and offline communications. Should everyone use Slack to communicate, for example? If sales need to submit a request, what platform or portal should sales use? If there is a joint effort to target a strategic tier I account, is there a project management tool to ensure everyone stays on top of tasks?
Technology plays a critical role in the modern digital world. Any collaboration and communication between sales and marketing need to be facilitated through a platform or tool.
Once you define the best way to work together, you need to establish your processes and test out technologies and tools proactively. Setting expectations upfront and allocating adequate time, budget, and resources to do it right is essential.
6. Incorporate sales-centric ROI
One critical element of sales and marketing alignment is to determine and agree on success metrics. Unsurprisingly, 91% of marketing professionals agree that marketing needs to add or modify marketing ROI metrics when they work with sales closely. Amen!
The survey also mentioned that the top metrics requested from the sales team are:
Lifetime value (LTV) of a customer (48%)
Percentage of revenue from new vs. existing customers (44%)
Annual contract value (ACV) (43%)
Although these are popular metrics, each industry and company has its success metrics. You need to pick the ones that work for you. Here are some examples of potential sales and marketing joint metrics:
Number of demos
Number of SQLs
Marketing-impacted pipeline opportunities
Number of invitation-only attendees
Number of webinar attendees who express interest in talking to sales
7. Measure the collaborations' success
In addition to having joint success metrics, many marketing groups also measure the success of collaboration. In the survey, marketing professionals measure the success of collaborating with sales using customer satisfaction score (56%), client retention rate (51%), revenue growth rate (48%), and speed of existing processes (48%).
It makes sense that these percentages should go up when sales and marketing are aligned. If you work closely with sales, it doesn’t hurt to correlate these scores with your internal collaborations.
Stay close to your sales team
The survey also asked marketing professionals the top methods to gather feedback from their sales team, and 86% said they conduct an annual survey (or more) each year. Meanwhile, 79% have regular communications with sales reps and their management team, and 78% regularly discuss objectives and results to ensure both teams are on the same page.
Communication is key! Talk to your salespeople and find out what their challenges are. Identify where you can help to make their jobs easier. Working together will also help marketing zero in on their buyer personas, allowing for better alignment with sales and an optimized marketing strategy with sales enablement initiatives. This will help you to gain an advantage over competitors.
Digital forces sales and marketing to be close to creating a seamless user experience for prospects. Thus, staying close to and having great relationships with sales is critical in modern marketing.
For more of Pam Didner’s insights and thought, check out her other pieces for Capterra: