According to a report by Aberdeen Research, enterprises with a single executive overseeing lead generation and sales closings experiences a 20 percent growth in revenue per year, while those that compartmentalized these two operations reported a four percent decline per year. 
The key to this improved performance was that the organizations with sales and marketing alignment could integrate these two silos, allowing personnel to share objectives, processes and methodologies that produced the greatest reward.
It should not be a surprise to you that almost half of all companies fail to meet sales quotas. While there are a multitude of reasons, one of the most important is that marketing teams often provide inferior leads. This not only causes a huge amount of conflict between sales and marketing teams, but it produces an enormous amount of wasted time and resources.
To improve sales results, it is important to integrate the two departments, so that sales personnel can help define what constitutes a lead, weed out unproductive leads at an early stage, and monitor the productivity of marketing personnel. Marketing personnel can better detail how to approach a potential customer and share their lead generating strategies. Dialoguing throughout the sales process will enhance both ends of the funnel.
Sales and marketing alignment should always revolve around the customer. Companies which keep their focus on customer needs are more likely to determine which clients are most likely to make a purchase. Instead of bickering about how personnel in the other department failed, using a common profile of what constitutes a likely sale can help improve outcomes. A client-centric approach is more effective because shifting business conditions can inform lead descriptions, allowing marketing to adapt their strategies.
The ultimate goal of sales and marketing alignment is to improve internal communication. When marketing personnel convince a lead to consider the vendor’s products, they may be employing a different set of terms, descriptors or methodologies than the sales team might. This type of dissonance can confuse clients or, even worse, appear dishonest. Ensuring that there is a common strategy with the same memes throughout is more likely to ease customers through the pipeline, rather than having to learn the lingo of marketing then sales.
This communication should be most robust at the interface between marketing and sales. When a lead has been nurtured to the point that it is ready to be handed to sales, there should be a clear set of pre-requisites and a defined hand-off procedure. This limits the possibility that a lead becomes stale while sales handles other priorities. There should also be communication channels firmly in place for marketing personnel to describe influencing factors like technical support or product variants.
The final area to consider when implementing sales and marketing alignment is that of analyzing lost sales. It is considerably easier to point an accusatory finger at the other department than to collaborate on how to improve the entire process. Companies which can cultivate a climate of partnership are better able to meet the challenges of declining sales.
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