B2B customers expect the smoothest of experiences. How do you achieve that? Sales and marketing alignment is critical.
We’ve worked with plenty of sales and marketing teams over the years trying to align, and one thing is clear: If you want to nail the customer buying journey, sales and marketing need to go hand-in-hand, integrating inbound and outbound activities.
The result of a cohesive team is a lot of lovely stuff: increased revenues, happier customers, and deals that close more quickly. In fact, aligned teams typically see a 35% increase in customer satisfaction scores. Sounds nice, doesn’t it?
Yep, but it isn’t easy.
This blog has distilled the five essential things every successful sales and marketing partnership does, so you can check each core component off your list and get on with growing your business.
Let’s get started.
“One of the most important things that sales and marketing can do to stay aligned is to embody best practices. When senior leaders make the effort to stay aligned, it has a knock-on effect throughout the organisation. It shows that collaboration is not only encouraged, but expected, and creates a culture in which your teams can flourish – together.” - Charlotte Banning
1. Define your target market
What customers and verticals are you specifically going after? Decide together. It’s important that the marketing and sales teams work closely on this to establish common messaging and unified goals. The next step? Teams specify brands they’d like to have as customers and work together on targets using account-based tactics.
2. Set the process
Decide who does what and when between marketing and sales – include key processes, such as: how to hand over leads, what to log in your CRM, and how to handle unqualified leads. This way, you’ll be working as one team and nothing will fall through the cracks.
3. Be more data driven
Take a formalised approach to collecting customer data, but instead of just funnelling it into a dark corner of a CRM, sit down and look at the accounts and patterns together. Make it part of your catch-ups between teams and create new goals off the back of it.
4. Balance short and long-term goals
It’s easy to be focused on the short-term when teams are looking for new leads, but it’s worth getting sales to buy into long-term marketing activities such as brand positioning. It’s also just as important that your customers are happy and use your product as they’re your best ambassadors, supporting sales. Marketing needs to provide support during the customer success journey to ensure they use the product and ultimately buy more. Get this process aligned and you’ll see the teams working better together.
5. Learn about each other’s roles
A lot of friction happens because people across teams don’t have much insight into what other people actually do. You can get round this by integrating some of their activities. Marketing can shadow sales at events and meet customers, while sales should be part of content workshops. It helps them to buy into what the other team does and allows them to understand how they can help each other. It’s also worth onboarding new people by both teams so they feel part of one unit.
Sales and marketing can be a fruitful union – if they’re aligned in the right way. A first-class, personalised customer experience is only achievable if the two functions are in sync.
It might not be an easy process, but the payoff from customer satisfaction is worth it. Now that more B2B SaaS customers than ever are on self-led buying journeys, sales and marketing need to inspire and educate – together.
A plan is essential to this. Data-driven targets, clear goals and complete visibility into each other’s roles will help both disciplines work better together.
The earlier you start, the better. If you’re reading this, you’re well on your way.
Want a full breakdown of how to align marketing and sales, including the most common pitfalls to avoid?
Read our field guide to sales and marketing alignment here.
We're Monterro, an investment firm (of the get-your-hands-dirty with strategy and operational support variety) that supports Nordic software companies to hit their biggest growth goals. If that's you: let's talk.
