What is Marketing and Sales Alignment?

The alignment between marketing and sales is a strategy that seeks to have a shared and agreed vision of the entire sales process. It goes from outlining the objectives depending on the needs of the business regarding scenarios and revenue hypotheses, to how to execute best practices through traditional commercial activity accompanied by the execution of campaigns; whether in the acquisition of new business or in customer loyalty and cross selling.

In short, the alignment of Marketing and Sales is about greasing the operational, people, processes and technologies to reach agreements on services, terminologies, collaboration and achieve business results commitments; this is only possible with a design, planning and balance between technology and business resources to execute the strategy.

In this content we will review the most relevant points that you should take into account for an effective alignment, highlighting:

Marketing and sales alignment or “Smarketing”: What is it?

Sales and marketing alignment is defined as the process of getting marketing and sales to work together in synergy towards a common goal.

HubSpot, a leading company that has propagated a union between both concepts, coining the term: “Smarketing“, which is nothing more than a union between both words:

Sales + Marketing = Smarketing

In this way, they have been able to package the message and scale it, making their platform the undisputed leader in the SMB segment, with the ability to build an army of partners via agencies and resellers.

Working to effectively deploy and understand Smarketing in your organization is essential to increase profitability and business competitiveness. According to Hubspot,companies that have well-aligned marketing and sales teams achieve an average of 20% annual growth.

People – Processes – Technology: A solution based on experience

In my experience as CEO of a digital agency, our tactic was to invest in SalesForce CRM and integrate it with a marketing automation solution from Market along with other advanced and cutting-edge digital tools looking to adopt the technology and execute a more ambitious and powerful inbound strategy along with marketing automation, however, our level of digital maturity was not prepared to take on the level of organization and resources for this new challenge.

In particular, cutting-edge technology is not a panacea for business problems, as it can lead to frustration of “want to” and “can’t”; basically because we are not ready and organized. Sometimes embracing and buying into a technological discourse only benefits those who sell the technology.

This action takes time, patience and perseverance. But if you do it right, you can reap a cohesive team that generates huge benefits in both improving lead acquisition and sales cycle management, as well as optimizing internal costs and team resources. According to LinkedIn*, 87% of leaders in both departments say that collaboration enables critical business growth and you can increase your annual returns by as much as 38%.

Cutting-edge technologies are essential because they allow us to scale resources and do more with less, however, we must have an organizational structure prepared to adopt it and have the fuel to make it work; for this, we have prepared what we call the “pre-operational phase”, which is based on the training of personnel to achieve a quality union between people, processes and technology.

Pre-operative phase: invest only in what you need

Sowhat is the solution we found for a successful synergy of objectives – despite the great differences between the two departments?

The answer lies in what I call the pre-operational phase with a carefully assigned order: “People – Processes – Technology“. Using this strategy we take care of auditing:

• If the company has the right and capable bench – this is the key ingredient for success.
• If there is a shared vision between general management, Marketing and Sales.
• If there is the capacity to create new work processes and that the entire team is prepared to manage change and that there is gasoline for resources.
• Above all, we focus on how to assimilate the valuable data and signals that come from Big Data obtained from digital tools. This is how technology is our last point to address in the pre-operational phase; the important thing is to train the sales and marketing team so that they know how to filter the data and capture the signals that are important for the development of their tasks.

In this sense, you should invest only in what is worthwhile once the commercial and marketing network has been trained, including:

• CRM integration with digital audiences and apply Account Based Marketing as a strategy to focus marketing and sales resources on a defined set of target accounts, design and manage customized campaigns to achieve a high impact message for different types of buyer personas.
• Invest only in the right audiences and only in what is worthwhile.
• Hyper-customization of multi-channel and multi-format campaigns.
• Sophistication of the process with predictive models to foresee possible outcome scenarios and anticipate decision-making.

Why is the alignment of Marketing and Sales important?

Silos between sales and marketing departments are a drawback present in all industries; the main problem of being misaligned is the inefficient processes that arise and ultimately waste time creating content without a clear objective and poorly aligned with sales needs.

79% of marketing leads never convert due to a failure to nurture connections with prospects. If both teams were working in sync, it would be less likely that all that work would be wasted or at least that there would be room for improvement which, in fact, most of the sales team believe they work out of alignment and that this greatly hurts the company’s revenue.

By including in the design and management of objectives the pre-operational phase as a strategic solution, we focused on uniting both departments by training workers on the art of knowing how to manage the commercial information that comes from technology, being at the right time, in the right place and with the right message.

This, in essence, is the alignment between marketing and sales with the support and sponsorship of general management. Everyone in alignment will have the ability to read and interpret all the data to sell more, with fewer resources.

Essential components of effective marketing and sales alignment

I will not tire of repeating over and over again, an alignment requires an enabling environment where people, processes and technologies are connected, this can lead to approximately 208%* growth in marketing revenue.

In the following, I will explain in detail what are the essential components of an effective sales and marketing alignment:

Single customer view
Disconnected systems create data silos containing different sets of information. When sales and marketing teams look at individual or groups of contacts, they see different things, which prevents them from acting in an aligned way.

The cornerstone of alignment is a consistent view of every contact, no matter who is looking or from where. A consistent Single Customer View -VCU- promotes appropriate response to buyer actions across all formats and lifecycle stages.

A VCU allows marketing to target potential customers autonomously and securely, with new campaigns and personalized content, without jeopardizing possible inter-departmental agreements, a sale or inconsistent messaging.

As everything is interconnected to a centralized database, Sales and Marketing see the same information and can consult in real time the latest interactions in each channel.

The work to be done is to agree on the customer relationship process and create a procedure that allows for consistency regardless of who launches the interaction with the customer.

Shared information to assess what works
Measuring the journey from contact to customer is like comparing the evolution of a series of X-rays over time, seeing their evolution, assessing the effect of the treatment and knowing what has worked, what hasn’t, and in what time window.

In our case, and thanks to information management, we can have every last piece of information to know which touchpoints -or interactions with the customer- have helped us in the conversion from contact to customer and measure the attribution of the sale. The big difference is that it must be unified between the marketing and sales departments.

The possibilities of analysis are incredible, allowing us to pick up signals left by the customer and activate strategies through data-driven campaigns. Once again, the great challenge is to know how to interpret them!

The big change in the alignment of Marketing and Sales is making decisions based on valuable data thanks to the work of people, creating a process supported by tools and technology.

Speak the same language
Before sales and marketing teams can collaborate effectively, we must ensure that they work in alignment. Both disciplines often use terms that, while common, have no fixed definition of lead, contact, Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) or Sales Qualified Lead (SQL). For sales, these terms are new, confusing and require adaptation in the use of common language.

By establishing and agreeing on your own concepts of key terms, such as those used to describe lifecycle stages or sales opportunity progression, we can avoid countless disagreements and future frustrations, allowing you to speak the same language when referring to the status of a contact in the sales funnel or across all promotional channels.

Agreeing on a common nomenclature is a fundamental part of the alignment process.

Contact qualification

I have seen many companies that route the leads collected from the forms for the sales network to qualify them.

This is a mistake and a problem because in most cases the contacts are not of quality, consequently, the attention and affection is lost when it comes to devote time by the sales network, to what comes through the online channel.

According to a Marketing Sherpa study,only 56% of companies validate the quality of leads before moving on to sales.

Within the alignment process agreement, and apart from the common nomenclature, it is necessary to agree on the qualification process (in form and format) and the response times.. The sales results of qualified leads may vary depending on the number of minutes it takes to respond to them.

Technologies and software also need to be aligned

Software integration isessential to generate a real-time, available and securecommunication flow. For this it is necessary to choose a technological stack, either by integrating leading, simple and economical applications or by choosing an all-in-one platform.

Cloud software categories such as CRM, Marketing Automation, reverse IP lookup for company identification, scraping programs, application connectors or automation software are some examples; it is worth noting that the number of sales and marketing applications has grown from 150 to 8000 in just 10 years.

But we insist that all this accumulation of technology is the means, not the end. The important thing is to sell and, for this, we need to extract, organize and know how to interpret the information at each stage of the sale. Technology is our key ally to achieve this.

Key statistics on marketing and sales alignment

Although many of these statistics are generated by the technology industry itself or by default by its implementers, always looking for success stories, everything must be taken with a grain of salt because each company and sector is a different world.

I want to share some surprising industry benchmarking data:

Phase 1: the alignment challenge

• According to the LinkedIn report*, 90% of sales and marketing professionals say that they are not aligned with strategy, process, content and culture. In parallel, 60% agree that this misalignment between the two departments hurts the organization’s financial performance.
• 23% of marketers in a report done by InsideView cited better quality leads as their top challenge to get by the marketing team.
• Only 7% of marketers said the leads they received from marketing were of very high quality. According to the HubSpot, Litmus and Wistia* report.
• According to a study by Kapost*, a content management platform acquired by Upland, 59% of marketers say they know what content sales teams want them to develop, but only 35% of marketers agree. This discordance is an effect of non-alignment.
• In contrast, 68% of marketers believe that sales teams do not use the content they produce to its full potential.
• However, according to the Harvard Business Review*, 68% of sales teams are confident that high-quality content produced by marketing could help close long and complex sales cycles.

But why does this happen? Largely because one third of both departments do not hold meetings to map out a joint work path; which is a consequence of the lack of alignment.

Phase 2: the results of alignment

• According to LinkedIn*, 87% of sales and marketing leaders report that collaboration between their departments enables business growth. In this regard, in B2B organizations where sales and marketing teams are well aligned we find that:
• They save 30%* on customer acquisition costs and have a 20% higher lifetime value.
• They enjoy an approximately 36%* higher retention rate.
• They acquire a 38%* higher rate of return on sales and are 67% more effective at closing deals.
• They see 27%* faster revenue growth.

Outfunnel, a marketing automation application with a focus on SMBs, has conducted a study* on marketing and sales alignment. Here are some of the most important headlines extracted from the study:

• Companies with seamless sales and marketing collaboration achieve higher revenues
• Revenue development is 70% more common among companies where cooperation between marketing and sales is effective.
• Among those who strongly agree that their teams cooperate effectively, 73% reported a year-over-year increase in revenue.
• In contrast, companies where cooperation is precarious and ineffective, only 43% saw an increase in profits. Nearly half of the professionals in both sectors still do not feel well aligned due to the existing dysfunctional relationship.
• Nearly half of professionals do not feel well aligned

Company size plays a key role, SMEs with 51-100 employees have a lower level of confidence with alignment than smaller and larger subgroups.

There is no other choice: we must migrate to digital!

Businesses that use marketing automation software and technologies to execute processes at scale and meet the goals outlined for a digital marketing strategy to nurture the experience of potential customers increase the number of qualified leads by 451%*.

Looking at the valuable report done by McKinsey & Company titled: “The Next Normal. The recovery will be digital”, it highlights the vital importance of technology within companies and the linking of all staff and departments to promote a digital recovery post COVID-19 pandemic.

And is that the transformation is horizontal to all departments and all sectors, as is the case of industry, which is using digital transformation to develop new ways to optimize their processes and give more value to their customers thanks to the servitization of products thanks to technology, with some examples such as:

• Computational power data and connectivity, such as sensors, Internet of Things, cloud technology and blockchain.
• Analytics and artificial intelligence, ranging from big data and advanced analytics to work automation.
• Human-machine interaction, including virtual and augmented reality, robotics and robotic process automation and chatbots.
• The benefits these companies have recorded include 30 to 50% reductions in equipment downtime, 15 to 30% improvements in labor productivity, 10 to 20% increases in throughput, and 10 to 20% decreases in cost of quality.

With these data I only want to reaffirm that change is unstoppable and no longer has to be done out of conviction, but out of necessity for survival in the market and, although producing well is important, selling is even more important.

The digitization of the commercial process must be part of this road map for change in this new post-covid era.

Digitalization program for SMEs in Spain

In Spain, we have the Digital Toolkit Program of the SME Digitalization Plan 2021-2025 that seeks to provide organizations with digital tools to optimize the management of their business.

This program aims to benefit:

• 145 thousand companies with between 10 and 49 workers.
• 1,100,000 microenterprises with 1 to 9 employees.
• 1,600,000 self-employed workers.

Although each sector has different digital needs, there are analogous technologies that everyone can take advantage of to seek an alignment of marketing and sales and thus, increase their profits, such as CRM, marketing automation, ERP, data analysis, among many others.

Now, at this point you may be wondering: How do I do to develop an effective strategy for alignment of Marketing and Sales? Let’s address this point next.

5 tips for successful alignment

By way of guidance and simplifying the process, the journey of aligning the sales and marketing teams within your company, here are 5 key tips to improve the way your business talks to, informs and deals with customers:

Create a unique Customer Journey

When it comes to alignment, the best place to start is by restructuring the entire customer journey. There should no longer be separate siloed experiences for your prospects, instead, you should aim for a single experience.

From the awareness stage at the top of the customer journey funnel to the loyalty stage, everything must be linked as part of the same process. This connectivity will allow our team to perform an optimized follow-up of the potential customer throughout the entire funnel.

The main organizational challenge is to obtain a holistic view of the user; this is where technology comes in.

2. Tools and technologies for joint use

According to a Content Marketing Institute study for LinkedIn, the most effective tools used for high sales and marketing alignment are, by priority:

• Customer Relationship Management -CRM- with 71%.
• Email marketing with 64%.
• Analytical analysis 63%.
• Marketing Automation -automation of marketing- with 39%.

3. To create an aligned and consensual chart of accounts.

This is a key aspect: we must know to whom we want to sell the product or service. Failure to clarify who the different buyers are can often lead to ineffective techniques and a disconnect between teams.

Sales may think they want to pursue anyone with money, while marketing may have a more specific and systematic approach to their ideal customer.

To get everyone on the same page and be more effective as a joint team, we should help the two teams agree on a customer profile, creating together a personality and attributes document with what they really value about us.

This document is a first approximation that will help us understand the type of customer we should do business with, based on factors such as company size, experience and industry.

Collaboration between sales and marketing helps to understand who they are, what they want and what their biggest challenges are.

The Customer Persona must be a living document, full of valuable data that is shared and validated by all those involved in the sales process. A common mistake is to do Marketing without Sales, who are the ones who know the customer profiles best.

In this way, you can have a real-time and always up-to-date version available for any authorized stakeholder to access when needed.

4. Joint KPI tracking

The alignment of sales and marketing teams is also about measuring and analyzing information in the same direction.

In sales, they are generally measured in numbers, whether they are new accounts, closed deals or contract renewals. Meanwhile, in Marketing, they are quantified by the number of leads, quality of leads, conversion rate and brand awareness.

Is it any wonder that they are not aligned by nature? Not at all!

To fulfill this part of the alignment, we must consider measuring the key performance indicators – KPIs – as a whole.

To understand this aspect, frequent meetings should be scheduled between the two departments during which the specialists can actively cooperate and agree on shared metrics to measure their performance.

5. Take advantage of your customers’ feedback

One of the richest materials we can receive after achieving our alignment is the feedback we receive directly from customers, also known as Voice Of Customer Data -VOC-.

The best time to collect VOC feedback is through customer service and during sales calls, which are a perfect opportunity for reps to discover potential customers’ pain points and motivations for purchasing the product or service.

We can then use these insights to select specific phrases or sentences to create new marketing messages, as well as to refine our brand offering. At the same time, we can use this data to better understand what the product’s buyer persona really likes.

Conclusion

As we move away from traditional marketing and sales techniques, companies of the future will focus on cultivating an environment that promotes Marketing and Sales alignment to increase revenue, build a team of connected employees, and grow the business effectively and adaptively to unexpected situations; as happened with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ultimately, aligning our sales and marketing team is an ideal strategy for developing the organization and scaling beyond what two teams working independently are capable of.

With our pre-operational phase: People – Processes – Technology, you will be taking the first step to audit if your company has the right bench, if there is a clear and joint vision between general management, Marketing and Sales and the possibility of developing new work processes where the whole team is prepared to manage it through the correct use of digital tools and the analysis of valuable data.

In addition, you will be investing your resources correctly and you will avoid a great economic loss when buying technologies that, due to a lack of organization and personnel training, you will not be able to get the utility that your business needs.

Technology skills training for workers comes first, then the technology – don’t forget!

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