Five characteristics of successfully aligned Sales & Marketing departments

Somewhere along the way, over the last 30 years, the marketing and sales function had a falling out. Contrary to the more recent delineation of both functions, marketing graduates of the early 90’s were taught to regard personal selling as a sub-set of the fourth of the 4P’s: promotion. It was a tactic. Much like advertising or PR. And it did not reign supreme, as direct marketing, where no “personal selling” was involved, would attest. So, it belonged to marketing, and marketing wasn’t letting it go.  

 But then personal selling managed to escape. It took on a life of its own, dropped “personal”, rebranded and became sales. Steaming ahead with or without marketing.

 However, as time elapsed, the two functions once again began to appreciate each other. Sales had missed marketing’s ability to anticipate and then fuel demand, whilst marketing was still reliant on sales’ ability to persuade and convert. And so, it brings us full circle, and the welcome (re) alignment of sales and marketing, heavily influenced by emergent trends such as the move from lead gen to demand gen, the shift to Rev Ops from siloed ops, and selling to a committee vs an individual with account-based marketing (ABM). Indeed a recent study found that successfully aligned sales and marketing teams generate 32% more revenue, retain 36% more customers and 38% higher win rates. 

 But how do you re-integrate once devoted bedfellows, ensuring no one side is hogging the duvet?  

 We have considered five areas that are key to successful alignment, helping you make your sales and marketing functions best of friends once again. 

1. Marketing to Sales Handoff

 Preparing your systems to ensure a handoff as smooth as silk is  hugely important to effective Marketing and Sales alignment. Aligned teams will be working to the same criteria for MQL’s (marketing qualified leads) and SQL’s (sales qualified leads), no matter how nuanced (e.g. lead score, product interest, buying stage), and expectations will be understood as prospects move to a sales-ready state from those considered marketing qualified.  

 Alignment dictates the mechanism for the handoff is frictionless. Internal notifications via email notify sales at the right time, ensuring the prospect is nurtured with care and precision. HubSpot tools facilitate this process and remove the need for external integrations, which segways nicely into our next area! 

2. Aligned Systems 

 The marketing tech scene is one hell of a beast. There are literally hundreds of tools and platforms that could be used to manage marketing and sales actions. Aligned teams reduce the number of platforms and tools to the bare minimum: the most aligned teams take it down to one! This eliminates context switching, common when using multiple tools, and ensures the correct data is being collected and shared. Aligned systems, such as HubSpot, remove data gaps and provide a single source of truth for decision making. 

3. Consistent Data

 Properly aligned teams benefit from consistent data as it is passed between functions and platforms. A tightly defined process working within a tool such as HubSpot helps eliminate data inconsistencies. This creates smooth handoffs, personalised campaigns, correct segment allocation and sensitively touched prospect accounts. 

4. Aligned MQL expectation 

 MQL generation is a universal marketing metric that can serve as a reasonably accurate barometer of marketing success. That is until it is viewed in the context of conversion to sales. Too often the drive to generate MQL’s does not always generate the quality demanded by sales, as the prospect consuming the content that generated the MQL is not always the prospect ready to buy the product. 

 Aligned teams coordinate the inputs to be able to maximise the outputs. They work together to learn from the process and define the TOFU (top of funnel)/MOFU (middle of funnel) needs to nurture MQL’s that are correctly supported by sales until they become sales-ready. 

5. Running successful ABM campaigns 

 Successful ABM (account-based marketing) campaigns come from successfully aligned teams. Because alignment provides data and insight that helps identify the entire buying committee that you need to know to execute an ABM campaign.  

 ABM activity demands forensic insight into job titles and buying roles, helping you build pictures of who and how to target, a product of sales and marketing functions that are complementary, aligned and back in bed. HubSpot is ideally suited to aligned teams, helping them plan, coordinate, and execute successful revenue generating activity through a single platform.  

 To discuss how we could help align your marketing and sales team into a single ‘revenue’ team, please get in touch, we’d love to have a chat with you!