All key elements of a positive buyer experience rely on a constructive relationship between marketing content and sales success. Put simply: alignment.

Why sales and marketing alignment is important

Marketing is often considered a long-term game, setting a foundation for a strong brand and generating marketing qualified leads. Salespeople, on the other hand, are looking to meet their sales quotas and to help prospects to solve problems. The sales team wants to know what the marketing team can do for them  now so that they can make the sale today.

What makes a positive buying experience from the perspective of a customer?

First, a salesperson should display a clear understanding of who the buyer is and what their needs are, whether this is done through a live presentation or via content shared online. In other words, the salesperson should recognize the pain points and introduce solutions that are highly relevant to that certain prospect. 

Second, the seller has to make the value proposition clear. In other words, communicate how your organization’s solution solves the buyer’s unique problems. This value proposition should be consistent from one interaction to another. 

Every interaction, whether with a salesperson or through digital channels, should also feel simple and streamlined. The journey a lead takes must feel natural and reasonable in order to keep their attention as you move them through the funnel.

All key elements of a positive buyer experience rely on a constructive relationship between marketing content and sales success. Put simply: alignment. In order to have a truly coordinated sales and marketing team, everything must be synchronized, including goals, roles, systems, and technologies.

3 common problems of sales and marketing alignment

1. We need to align our marketing strategy with our sales strategy. 

Sales and marketing alignment is vital for both organizational success and spirit. Sales and marketing teams should have shared goals and regular meetings to keep track of the shared goals and communicate freely about workflow, obstacles, and wins.

2. Our sales team is not doing anything for the leads marketing is sending them.

According to research from Marketo, sales often ignore up to 80% of marketing leads. Instead, they decide to spend half their time on unproductive prospecting. If marketing does not provide the sales team new, ready-to-buy leads, sales easily waste their time focused on older leads that have not shown any positive response. 

3. We need to ensure our sales team is focusing on the right sales cases.

A good size business may have hundreds of sales deals in its CRM pipeline. Imagine if your sales reps went through each deal simply based on intuition or in the order assigned. Without being able to spot hot deals from the cold deals, time and energy are lost, and viable opportunities are overlooked because they weren’t prioritized. 

How data-analytics can improve sales and marketing alignment?

Data analytics serve as a gateway between sales and marketing and can support alignment success when implemented properly.  

Setting the common goals for sales and marketing is only the first part of the common strategy. Keeping track of the shared KPIs in all digital channels is vital to success. A good enabler platform is integrated into all main channels and keeps track of your cross-functional activities during the entire buyer journey from marketing to sales.  

Marketing wants high engagement with content; sales want to close deals as quickly as possible. But the ultimate objective is the same: generating more revenue. 

Predictive Lead Scoring can be utilized to ensure that leads are only delivered from marketing to sales when ready to buy. Elements used in scoring are typically related to content engagement and firmographics to ensure a good match between your offer and prospects. 

Predictive Deal Scoring, further up in the pipeline, looks at data points from the sales CRM and is used to predict the likelihood of success of each deal in the sales pipeline ensuring that the sales team focuses on winning cases which then creates more velocity to the sales cycle and ultimately more revenue. 

Full-funnel Analytics helps your company to align marketing and sales

InlineInsight is a sales and marketing analytics platform that increases business performance. The platform capabilities include full-funnel analytics that pulls together your sales and marketing data and lets you analyze your customers' actions from the first touchpoint to a closed deal.

This will help the sales and marketing teams to aim for the same goal, generating more revenue. Read more about the solution here. 

Full-Funnel Analytics

 

Ari Heino

Written by Ari Heino