There has been a lot of discussion around this topic. I think it is very simple, and I honestly don’t understand all those articles, videos, and arguments discussing sales-marketing alignment or, mainly, misalignment. How can those two departments not work together? There are so many benefits of close cooperation between Sales and Marketing, so let's take a closer look at them.
Also, I think the discussion should go even further than marketing vs sales. Why is it only between marketing and sales? Yes, those two need to work closely together, but if a company wants to be successful, the whole company needs to be aligned. Not just marketing and sales. We should be talking about aligning the entire funnel from marketing to sales to customer success or service, which goes back to marketing. Why go back to marketing? Simple. One of the best leads and new customer generation channels is a referral from an existing happy customer. That's why HubSpot started using a term Flywheel instead of the funnel. It is a closed loop.
But let’s discuss the simple version for now—marketing and sales alignment. Alignment sounds like a big deal, but it’s not. It just means those two departments need to work together. And I wouldn’t even say departments, as it’s always about people—how they communicate and work together.
But why do those two need to work together?
Well, it’s simple. They need each other and can hugely benefit from working together. Sales need marketing, and marketing needs sales, full stop.
Again, the answer is straightforward: to increase sales hit targets more easily, receive bonuses, and help the company grow.
I think marketing these days plays an even more crucial role in the business than ever before. First, as we all know, people changed how they buy things. And it doesn’t matter if we talk about B2B or B2C. It’s always about people. Even in the B2B environment, some person needs to make the decision. Yes, there are a few different factors that affect the final decision, but the main thing is that people are now smarter and have access to much more information thanks to the internet and social media. So what do people do before they make the decision to buy something, and it doesn’t matter if it’s a car, holiday or new marketing automation software?
They do their research!
They search the web, check social media, ask friends, check the reviews, attend events, watch videos, etc. They do anything possible to make the right choice when they finally make the purchasing decision. The key thing for our discussion is that this happens before people are happy to talk to a salesperson or hit the Buy Now button. Usually, when people are willing to speak to a salesperson, they are ready to purchase; they know what they want and what options they have.
So how do we ensure that whenever a customer is ready to talk to the salesperson or press the Buy Now button, they not only know about our products or services but also choose and purchase them?
Well, the answer is simple. It’s marketing’s job to do exactly this.
Marketing is responsible for ensuring customers find us during their research and building relationships with potential customers so that they are already emotionally attached to our brand when they are ready to talk to sales or make the purchase.
Marketing needs to make sure that when people search for answers to their questions on Google, they find an answer from us, or when they check their social media, we will be there in front of their eyes, telling them hey, we can help you with …, or if someone attends an event about digital marketing trends, we will be there presenting and proving we can help that person to do their job better etc.
See, we are not selling at this stage. We are trying to help people to solve their needs, pains, requirements or desires. And we are visible = creating brand awareness, building up relationships, and creating an emotional attribute for when they are making the final decision.
The best marketing goes even one step ahead when we use content and communication to create the need for something. It is when our potential buyers learn about something from us, even without them looking and searching for a particular solution. Just think about this yourself. Have you listened to some podcasts or seen a video about something that can help you, but you didn't know about that? After that, did you start to look for more information about that thing?
An example from a few years ago, when HubSpot started talking about Inbound Marketing, is one of the best examples of such a situation. They didn't try to sell their marketing automation software (back then, today, it's a full stack CRM). They educated marketers (their primary buyer persona) on inbound marketing. For most, it was a new methodology, a new strategy. So marketers were learning all about Inbound Marketing. As they were getting more and more information, they found out that if they wanted to do Inbound Marketing, they needed a marketing automation tool. Which one, do you think, was their preferred choice when selecting the available tools? I am sure it was HubSpot. At least subconsciously.
Imagine when such a marketer interacted with HubSpot BDR for the first time; how would that conversation go? Just compare a cold sales call with a person who has no idea about HubSpot with a call initiated by a potential customer who already knows about Inbound Marketing and HubSpot.
This is a perfect example of how marketing can help sales.
The second reason sales can benefit from working closely with marketing is data and a massive reduction of time spent on admin and manual processes. The modern digital world helps marketing and sales use and analyse many interesting and important data.
Those can be a few examples of questions a salesperson from the typical B2B environment can ask or should be asking. Why? If a salesperson gets answers to questions like this, they will know much more about the prospects’ interests, which can help them make the sales process much easier and more effective. They can prepare for a targeted, personalised sales call, easily plan their sales pipeline, and set up different priorities about which leads and prospects they should follow up on or which deals they can close faster.
Super handy. Don't you think?
But where can a salesperson get all this data? They don’t have time for this.
Well, again, from marketing.
Thanks to modern marketing tools, marketers can quickly provide answers to all those questions and place them in front of the salesperson’s eyes. If a salesperson is not a fan of using modern tools, you can simply ask marketers and have a discussion. They have all the data and should happily provide you with all the info needed. Remember, you both have a common goal—company growth.
Another example of how marketing data can help sales make their life easier and improve their performance is that marketing can provide a complete full-funnel performance analysis. Conversion rates, ROI, or engagement data all help to provide sales with the best possible leads with the highest probability of closing those leads into customers in the shortest time.
Marketing automation also plays a vital role in how marketing can help sales to improve their performance. Imagine a salesperson is working with a prospect, but the prospect becomes a bit cold. They have different priorities; they don’t have a budget now, or they just simply became unresponsive for no apparent reason to us.
And now what?
One thing a salesperson can do is simply create a task in their calendar to follow up later and focus on other warmer or hotter prospects. Sure, that’s understandable, but what will happen with this cold prospect in the meantime? It can be a few months; unless the salesperson calls them, we don’t know what is happening there. Plus, they can simply forget about us as they are busy with other things. So, when the salesperson finally calls back after a few months, it can be one of those cold calls again. It's not exactly what you want as a sales guy, right?
Enters marketing automation and Nurture marketing to keep that lead or prospect warm till they are ready to talk to us again.
But how does marketing know they need to nurture some sales prospects? Well, they again need to cooperate and work closely together. They must define the process and rules of transferring leads from marketing to sales and back to marketing. This is extremely easy, thanks to modern marketing tools, and the whole process can be automated. Not only is marketing helping sales to nurture their prospects but by using modern tools, marketing is also saving a lot of valuable time by using automation for both sales and marketing. High five!
Now, let’s go to the other side. Marketing needs to work with Sales, and they need to work extremely closely together for a few reasons.
Thanks to the modern digital world, marketers can research and analyse massive amounts of data about their customers and their behaviour. This is absolutely fantastic, and marketers can leverage all that data and information to build and promote products or services people need or desire. Marketers get direct feedback by analysing websites, social media channels, app usability, and campaigns, and they get direct feedback from customers on various digital channels like Google, Facebook, G2 Crowd, Tripadvisor, Uber, Airbnb, etc.
That’s a lot of data and valuable information that marketers can use. However, the sales team, customer service team, or delivery consultants talk directly to our prospects and customers daily. They know exactly who our target audience is, what they do during the day, what problems they are trying to solve, or what dreams and desires they have (or at least they should know if they want to achieve their sales targets and help the company grow).
Communicating and working closely with the sales team is extremely important for marketers to understand the audience better and then define marketing strategies and tactics based on this deep knowledge about customers.
Marketers need to know as many details about the target audience as possible to be able to:
Marketers can surely get many of these insights directly from sales. Talk to them, have an open discussion, and leverage their knowledge and the information they provide to improve your marketing performance.
Another option to gather essential data and information is to ask your Sales team to invite you to their meetings with leads, prospects, and clients. Try to get into meetings or calls in all different situations. Discovery calls, demo presentations, and follow-up calls—are all fantastic ways to get different types of information that can help you improve your marketing strategies and tactics.
These days, marketing should always have its key goals aligned with the key company’s goals and objectives. Marketing strategies, campaigns, or even just a basic blog article should always have some clear and measurable goal behind them (sure, everyone heard about SMART goals). Otherwise, how do you know what campaigns to run, how much to invest, and where to invest?
This is a simple example: Our company wants to grow revenue by 20% this year. To achieve this, we need x number of customers. Some will be new customers, and some will be driven by existing customers through up-sell or cross-sell. This sets the sales targets, which can be divided into half-yearly, quarterly or monthly targets.
Sales need leads to achieve their sales targets. They need people willing to purchase our product or service. And as we all know, not all leads convert into customers. Let’s say we need 100 leads to close 10 sales deals. We then go into detail about what kind of leads we need to close those 10 deals and generate the targeted revenue.
With all this information, marketing needs to work closely with Sales to define which channels will generate those 100 leads. Once we know how many leads marketing needs to generate, marketers must define their marketing strategies and tactics to ensure they deliver that agreed-upon number of leads.
It's simple. Marketing needs to be driven by the company and sales targets, so they must work closely together to achieve that. Marketing needs to know the Sales KPIs and targets to deliver relevant leads.
I am using a simplified version only for the purpose of this article, where I discuss Marketing and Sales alignment. Typically, the whole process goes well beyond Marketing and Sales. Marketing needs to work closely with Customer Service or Customer Success (however you call it), Product, HR, and Finance…pretty much all departments in a company.
Simply said, all departments should work closely with Marketing, as they can benefit from working together and achieve the common goals.