Aligning Sales and Marketing to Drive More Sales

sales and marketing alignment

Aligning Sales and Marketing to Drive More Sales

At Axiom, our team has extensive client-side experience. We’ve been on the product development side, the sales side, and headed marketing departments. One of the benefits of working with us is we can coach your teams on how to align sales and marketing to drive more revenue.

We’re fortunate to work with some of the most innovative companies. The senior leaders have extensive experience in their business verticals, but in some cases, have become disconnected from the latest marketing tools and tactics (chatbots, ABM, and automation, for example).

Today, marketing teams are smarter than ever, technology-driven, and highly efficient. However, many have not yet developed their strategic skills, and ability to manage up, and in some cases, do not understand the company’s overall strategic goals.

This dynamic can lead to sales and marketing misalignment. Unfortunately, this is all too common.  Hubspot’s State of Inbound 2018 Global Report found that just 26% of organizations report being aligned.

 
Here are some examples of questions we get asked that can signal a misalignment:

  • Executive: Marketing says we have to be on Facebook, should we?
  • Marketing: The Boss says he’s not comfortable with video, but our competitors are killing it on video, we need to keep up, how do we convince him?
  • Executive: Marketing says we are getting lots of traffic on our website, but I don’t see revenue increasing, why should I invest more in marketing?
  • Marketing: We create tons of content on our website and are increasing traffic, but the Boss doesn’t seem to care, what can we do to show her this matters?

When asked these questions, we know to ask more questions. Are the revenue teams and marketing teams collaborating? Do they have regular team meetings? Are they using data to drive their decisions?

If the answer is no, then our next step is to help align the sales and marketing teams. To do that, we recommend the following best practices to our clients:

      1. Marketing leads sit in on sales and business strategy meetings. It’s key that they know the overall corporate strategy and what metrics Executives are judging success to align the marketing work to sales goals.
      2. Insist that sales leaders sit in on marketing team meetings. I could retire if I had a dollar for every time I heard sales reps say, marketing doesn’t get what we do. By having sales leaders sit in on marketing meetings you can ensure that the content and campaigns align with what sales teams, prospects, and customers need.
      3. Before making any recommendations on marketing strategy and tactics, do your homework. Market research isn’t something you do once every 3 years. It’s an ongoing process. The world is changing faster than ever and you need to know where your customers turn for information. Do you know how or if COVID-19 shifted where your customer consumes their info? They might be on Facebook, but if they aren’t don’t waste your time.

 

Teams with strong sales and marketing alignment drive 208% more revenue from their marketing. How can we help you align your sales and marketing teams for accelerated success?

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