Team alignment is a top priority for today’s high-level sales and marketing professionals. It’s no longer a concept, it’s a requirement.
In fact, this topic took center stage at both the 2015 Mid-Atlantic Marketing Summit and the Salesforce World Tour in Washington DC.
According to Marketo, when sales and marketing teams are in sync, companies are 67 percent better at closing deals. The foundation of collaboration is open, honest and frequent communication. That shouldn’t be so hard to achieve, right?
It’s no secret that modern sales and marketing professionals often struggle to understand the needs and priorities of each other’s teams. Inevitably, this disconnect creates frustration and dissatisfaction across the organization.
View this 30-minute webinar replay featuring Kurt Gastrock, Senior Vice President of Enterprise Sales at Neustar, to gain exclusive insight into what today’s sales leaders expect from their marketing organization.
Once open communication and an understanding of one another’s needs is established, it’s crucial that sales and marketing teams work together to define clear-cut goals.
According to Allan Rubin, VP of marketing at immixGroup, “It’s really important that everyone agrees up front on expectations and how success will be measured.”
“These decisions need to be documented, updated frequently, and revisited regularly to make sure everyone is in sync and to hold people accountable to their commitments.”
“The better you are at this, the easier it will be to replicate your joint successes and limit failures, giving both sides a chance to buy in and gain insight into how to work together.”
To read more on marketing a sales alignment from Allan Rubin, click here.
For instance, sales and marketing teams should have a clearly outlined process for qualifying sales leads. If both teams understand what defines a true prospect, marketers can work to accelerate the sales team’s path to the proper customers and the sales team can utilize tailored marketing content to truly engage with potential buyers.
Click here to read more about how your organization can define a process for identifying qualified sales leads.
While aligning your marketing and sales may seem like a daunting task, it is also a necessary one. Without proper communication and frequent collaboration, opportunities for revenue growth will inevitably fall through the cracks, impacting the organization as a whole.