How to Create Effective Sales and Marketing Alignment

To adjust to customer expectations, sales and marketing need to work together – delivering the same messaging and experience across all touchpoints.

Second chances are few, and competition is high. Customers are no longer tolerant of breaks in communication, missed opportunities, etc. Landing the sale, thus bringing in revenue, means getting things right the first time.

Alignment between sales and marketing isn’t a one-off task; it’s an ongoing process. It requires collaboration from leadership down to individual team members, in big-picture strategy sessions, and on individual client calls. It takes work, but it can be done. And when it’s done effectively, this alignment results in shorter, more effective sales cycles, higher conversion rates, and more revenue pouring in.

Having said that, aligning sales and marketing is hard for a number of reasons. In many cases, they function as separate areas with little cross-collaboration. There can even be rivalry and frustration between the two groups; sales is frustrated with marketing for not giving them the collateral and leads they need, while marketing sees sales as delivering a poor follow-through on their work.

For the sake of productivity and profitability, this has to change.

Bringing Sales and Marketing Together

In reality, sales and marketing are closely related. It’s not a stretch to say that they work on the same goal (bringing in customers and thus revenue), albeit in different ways and from different perspectives. So how can sales and marketing teams work together to align truly?

1. Change Team Cultures

If anything like the divided situation described above exists within your company, it’s imperative to start changing those mindsets. Do away with the us vs. them, sales vs. marketing mentality. Instead, embrace an open and curious culture that looks for joint solutions rather than ways to shift blame. This might be a big ask for some teams, but it’s essential that sales and marketing see themselves as working toward the same goal – as they indeed are.

A big part of this is getting to know how the other team works, their challenges, and their daily tasks. For example, a marketer might not appreciate what a salesperson has to wade through to have a productive contact – i.e., lots of back-and-forth, indecision, and outright rejection. Meanwhile, salespeople may not be giving marketers feedback on the effectiveness of the leads or collateral marketing provided; this makes it very difficult to deliver things that actually work.

2. Communicate and Set Expectations

The key to changing team cultures is communication. For some companies, this entails job switching (marketers and sales reps switch jobs for a set time) or partnering (members from both teams work together, i.e., going on a sales call or working on research, campaigns, analysis, etc.). The goal is to build a deep understanding and respect for both sides of the equation. It also helps both sides understand that neither sales nor marketing are linear processes; both require revisiting, fine-tuning, and persevering toward a goal!

On a management level, communicating involves everything from sharing data to determining what metrics will be used to measure success – and how metrics (and success) will be defined! It even means coming up with a naming process together and ensuring that both teams know what these names apply to.

Finally, after all of the groundwork is set, sales and marketing teams can decide on service level agreements for each group – e.g., marketing will deliver X qualified leads or develop Y materials to support campaign Z; sales will follow up on X leads within N time. And, of course, both teams will be aligned on the messaging and goal of campaign Z!

3. Strategize and Analyze Together

Often, the strategy falls to marketing, who generally has the overall view of the market and industry. However, omitting sales from strategy sessions means skipping the viewpoint of people on the front lines who deal directly with the intended audience. Thus, sales’ fine-grained qualitative perspective (i.e., customer and prospect oriented) can provide a very useful supplement to marketing’s big-picture quantitative perspective (i.e., incorporating segment, market data, and product data).

It’s important to invite this dual-perspective outlook to the post-campaign analysis, too. Each side can provide valuable input on what went well and what could be improved; a salesperson might catch a detail that a marketer overlooked, and vice versa.

4. Develop Insight, Messaging, and Collateral Jointly

During a campaign, sales and marketing should pool their insights as described above. Team leaders should develop messaging jointly so that 1) both teams can be informed and in sync, and 2) customers won’t get a jarring disconnect when moving between teams or channels. Sales can even join in on developing ideas for specific marketing collateral – who better to know what customers are currently responding to!

5. Lead Together

Finally, sales and marketing need to work together at top levels as well as in their daily tasks. Whether it’s ensuring that teams can share meaningful data back and forth, collaborate effectively via technology, or keep their internal processes aligned to support each other, alignment has to stretch from the top of the department all the way to the bottom.

The Rewards of Sales-Marketing Alignment

When your sales and marketing teams align, synergy develops. Together they can be a powerful force, achieving more efficiency and effectiveness than what either one alone could do. As both bring unique perspectives and strengths, a more holistic, customer-centric approach becomes possible. And this can ultimately help you grow and stabilize your business.

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