Sales and marketing are two of the main revenue drivers for many organizations, but these two departments may not fully realize their value to one another. The good news is that our 2024 Sales Engineering Compensation & Workload Report found 73% of sales contributors already support marketing efforts through events, webinars, public demos, and video content.
By going further to intentionally strengthen this bond, and understanding the risks associated with failure, your sales team can drive results, increase internal communication, and enhance your sales process.
Common Causes of Sales and Marketing Division
Both essential to your business success, sales and marketing often overlap during the lead qualification and sales process. However, despite having similar goals, these two departments often aren’t on the same page about the “how” and “why.” In fact, 9 out of 10 sales and marketing professionals believe they are misaligned on process, strategy, and culture.
According to an investigation by LinkedIn, this division is often caused by a few common issues, such as:
- Sales and marketing being evaluated differently by different people
- Differences in systems and processes
- Content misalignment due to a lack of collaboration
- Passive day-to-day relationships
If left unresolved, these issues can quickly burn a hole in your sales funnel and snowball into a variety of other problems affecting your sales process.
Risks of Sales and Marketing Misalignment
Internal disorder between your sales and marketing teams can impact your bottom line, but by knowing what’s at stake, you can motivate your teams when encouraging the departments to coordinate.
Lead Qualification Issues
In a survey by Gartner, 62% of sales leaders said their sales and marketing departments defined leads differently. If sales and marketing aren’t aligned on when a lead is considered qualified, marketing-qualified leads become less valuable. This can create inefficiencies in both teams’ workflows and lead to lost opportunities.
Content Dissonance and Disuse
Research by LinkedIn shows that 97% of sales and marketing professionals face challenges with alignment on content and messaging. If marketing content has one message, and sales has another, the sales team will be less likely to use the content marketing created, which costs your organization time and resources.
Lost Revenue
In a Hubspot report, 52.2% sales professionals said lost sales and revenue is the biggest impact of sales and marketing team misalignment. Teams lacking alignment let leads slip through the cracks, have trouble converting marketing-qualified leads due to messaging issues, and fail to nurture relationships because of miscommunication.
These risks make it clear that a division between your sales and marketing teams can be detrimental. To avoid these issues, your teams need to make a combined effort to work as one and build a more effective process.
Achieving Sales and Marketing Alignment
According to a study by LinkedIn, 85% of sales and marketing leaders believe that aligning their departments is the largest opportunity for improving business performance today. Taking the right actions toward alignment can improve your sales and marketing department’s joint performance.
Set Joint Goals
According to Gartner, sales teams that set interdepartmental KPIs are nearly three times as likely to exceed customer acquisition targets. Working in tandem with marketing to establish mutually beneficial goals can not only increase alignment, but improve motivation across your organization.
Consider using metrics that measure both sales and marketing performance, such as:
- Conversion rate
- Customer acquisition cost
- Customer lifetime value
- Cost per lead
Checking in with both teams monthly on the progress of these KPIs can improve your chances of making corrections where there are issues and driving high-performing tactics that are positively impacting your results.
Unite to Identify Target Customers
Knowing who your organization wants to sell to is essential to creating a cohesive strategy. Having both sales and marketing involved in the ideal customer profile (ICP) creation process improves consistency and offers expert perspectives from everyone involved in acquiring leads.
At the beginning of your sales strategization, schedule meetings with marketing to go over what data they’ve acquired on your target audience and work together to build a profile that matches your analytics and goals. Include equal members of each department to ensure accountability and fair representation in this process.
Use Sales Enablement Tools
Through digital solutions like demo automation by Consensus, sales and marketing can better work as one unit. Demo automation allows marketing to act as another arm of your sales team, qualifying leads and delivering informed, empowered buyers to your reps — reducing the overall effort required from both teams, elevating your buyer experience, and improving your win rate.
Encourage Honest Feedback
One of the keys to proper alignment is open communication. Allowing your sales and marketing teams to share honest, constructive feedback with one another about your processes may be the key to identifying outdated tactics, inaccurate messaging, and unexpected areas for improvement.
Consider using tactics such as anonymous surveys, a private question or comment box, or dedicated meetings centered around team improvement to offer both teams the opportunity to provide feedback.
Synchronize Messaging
Inconsistent messaging can result in lost leads and confused buyers. Aligning product messaging with your sales and marketing teams before launching a campaign ensures buyers are being sold the same features and benefits by your sales team that your marketing team used to bring them into your sales funnel.
Take Alignment to the Next Level with Smarketing
Smarketing is a term coined by Hubspot that’s used to describe sales and marketing teams that are so aligned, they essentially operate as a single team. By achieving a state of constant alignment and communication, your sales and marketing teams will elevate performance and ease their combined stress.
If working together in-person, consider moving the locations of both teams so they’re close to one another in the office, improving the ease of communication. If everyone’s remote, hold a weekly check-in with both teams to help raise concerns and improve synchronization.
Synchronize Sales and Marketing with Consensus
Connecting your sales and marketing efforts with a single synchronized solution allows your sales team to stay on the same page when collecting and pursuing leads. Consensus offers demo automation solutions that empower both sales and marketing, while ensuring a unified message. To find out more, talk to our team about how Consensus can help align your sales team and elevate your sales process.
