It just takes commitment, cooperation and communication.
There’s no denying that alignment between marketing and sales creates unparalleled opportunities for improving business performance. When marketing and sales teams work together, they can increase productivity, generate greater returns and drive business growth. Given that, one would think the two would always work closely together, but the reality is that quite often, they don’t.
The age-old issue is that marketing believes it is feeding sales what it needs in the way of qualified leads and targeted campaigns. However, sales often says that most of the leads they receive are unqualified, and that marketing fails to address the real pain points of the customers.
There are a lot of tools on the market today — from marketing automation platforms to CRM — that promise to bridge the divide and bring marketing and sales closer together. The reality, however, is that there are no silver bullets and all the automation, intelligence and plug-and-play tools available are not going to affect the kind of change necessary to solve this issue. To turn “the dream” of sales and marketing alignment into reality, the teams must commit, cooperate and communicate.
Sales and Marketing must begin by committing to working together. Without a commitment, from both sides, the teams will eventually drift apart, fall back into their old ways and be right back where they started — facing the same issues all over again. As with life, successful relationships take commitment.
The teams must realize the value that both sides bring to the table and that they are working together towards a common goal. They must be willing to put forth the effort necessary to work through the critical processes of defining lead profiles and targets, determining lead scoring models and management processes, and developing cultivation campaigns. The teams must get on the same page with all of these initiatives.
Sales and marketing must establish clear lines and processes for communication. There will be hits and misses along the way, but the teams must understand and embrace iteration and optimization. Sales should invite key marketing members to key sales meetings and vice versa. The two teams should meet to regularly review outcomes, discuss performance and apply what they’ve learned to improve marketing and sales tools, lead performance, lead scoring, lead quality, etc.
Sales and marketing alignment is critical to organizational success. Commitment, cooperation and communication are key to getting both departments on the same page and moving your business to new levels of top-line growth.
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