Supercharge Your Growth with Sales & Marketing Alignment eGuide

Supercharge your growth with sales & marketing alignment Sales and marketing: a meeting of minds

Supercharge your business growth

What if Imagine your marketing and sales teams worked in partnership, acknowledging that closing a sale is a

Do you ever feel as though your sales and marketing teams resemble opposing sides in a football match, rather than teammates?

shared responsibility. Everyone would work towards the end goal of getting higher quality leads to enable high-profit sales at an increased rate.

This is known as sales and marketing alignment, an approach that allows you to accelerate performance across both teams, resulting in 38% higher sales win rates (MarketingProfs).

Everyone is pursuing the same goals – qualified leads and conversions to sales – yet the two

If sales shared their in-depth customer knowledge,

teams deploy completely different strategies

marketing could base their strategy around it.

and tactics to achieve these.

You’d find that marketing would do a better job of raising awareness and educating your target audience,

What this means is that your sales and

passing better qualified leads over to sales.

marketing teams are working in silo. They’re not sharing insights or collaborating to drive

Your sales team would understand how marketing

the best quality leads.

has driven the lead and have a clearer strategy going forwards of how their involvement would move the prospect closer to the point of sale.

Aside from increased revenue and clients, your company will be stronger and more successful thanks to many factors, including:

The hurdle

What now?

» Clearer mapping of the sales and marketing processes

Closing a sale shouldn’t have to be a painful process.

» A stronger understanding of your target market

Instead, you want to achieve sales and marketing

» Better engagement between sales and marketing

alignment, whereby your teams are best positioned to attract, nurture and convert leads by:

» Improving communication between teams

Your marketing team’s activity drives a high volume of leads that

» Increasing transparency

are passed over to sales.

» Fostering collaboration

However, they’re all unqualified, which means that the suitability

Sales and marketing alignment is vital for B2B companies

of the leads hasn’t been assessed before they’re passed over to sales. This means your sales team has no way of knowing which leads to prioritise. They’ll likely waste valuable resources trying to find the few precious needles hidden in the haystack.

Alternatively, sales will discount the marketing leads altogether in favour of fewer, higher quality leads they generate themselves.

This shows that there’s a huge data disconnect between your marketing and sales teams, which is a common occurrence

that sell complex products to committees of decision makers over an extended timeframe. Bringing your teams together unveils the golden opportunity to:

» Close the marketing-sales loop » Build a single revenue-generating engine » Work together to attract visitors, nurture leads, sell to opportunities and win customers

in many businesses. As high as 90% of sales and marketing

Continue reading our guide to discover practical

professionals point to multiple disconnects across strategy,

insights about how your business can leverage an

process, content, and culture (LinkedIn, 2020).

aligned sales and marketing approach.

Without established lead management processes and workflows, the problems for your sales and marketing teams will continue.

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Disconnect: the marketing and sales divide Historically, marketing and sales have worked in silos and developed independently. They’ve previously sat in separate offices, used different technologies and worked towards their own goals.

What are some of the problems that arise from this?

Data disconnect When marketing and sales don’t share insights, they can’t work towards helping one another achieve success.

Many B2B marketers will pass their leads to sales, and never see or hear of these again. Or, marketers will be able to track the volume of leads they’re generating, but struggle to understand which ones later become revenue.

Vital lead information is missed

A meeting of minds The aim of sales and marketing alignment is to ensure everyone is working towards the same objectives.

Rather than pushing and pulling in different directions, your sales and marketing should be part of one bigger, seamless process.

This starts with marketing A common misconception is that marketing is purely a lead-generation machine. In actual fact, marketing

Before moving ahead, your sales team should evaluate

occurs before lead generation. Every marketing activity,

the quality of the MQLs and whittle this list down to a

from an email campaign and blog to organic social

select number of sales accepted leads (SALs). These are

posts and paid ads, will simultaneously educate your

leads that the sales team acknowledges are worthwhile

their own approach.

target audience and raise your company’s profile.

and have committed to act on.

When it comes to your marketing efforts, it’s worth

With highly relevant and engaging marketing activity,

If the teams work separately and marketing has historically passed over low-quality leads, it’s understandable that sales would prefer to adopt

considering if your sales team is being supported to

your team can drive higher quality marketing leads (MLs)

Report on revenue, then optimise activity

understand what marketing is doing to drive new leads.

of prospects who want to engage with your business.

Both your marketing and sales teams need to be

Then you should assess the process to ensure sales are

Before passing these to sales, marketing should

themselves. With marketing attribution tools marketing

always made aware of new leads in their list.

pre-qualify their leads to determine their suitability.

According to Reachforce, sales reps ignore up to 50% of

A marketing qualified lead (MQL) refers to a prospect

marketing leads and instead, spend time prospecting

that the marketing team has worked with and considers

their own leads.

a good potential buyer.

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Sales takes lead quality assessment to the next level

reporting back on revenue, rather than the leads can report on their revenue generated and optimise their future activity to drive more high-quality leads.

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Supercharge your business growth

Strategy How will successful sales and marketing alignment benefit your business?

Simplified workflows

» Content development – the full-cycle creating,

The first step towards bridging the gap between sales

distributing and auditing of content to meet a

and marketing is ensuring your teams work from the

strategic goal

same piece of technology. This will help them easily share insights, knowledge and data, as well as track the progression of leads as they move further down the funnel.

Whether you’re creating collaborative project teams or a joint Slack group, it’s vital that everyone is of the same mindset.

Even if your marketing and sales teams aren’t working directly with each other on a given task, they’ll need to understand how each activity feeds into the other team’s objectives.

A shortened sales cycle The B2B buying process has shifted massively in recent years. Buyers now purposefully delay interactions with sales, often ignoring traditional tactics such as phone calls and emails.

» Nurturing – developing and reinforcing relationships with buyers at every stage of the sales funnel

» Content engagement – measuring and evaluating a buyer’s actions when interacting with a piece of your content

» Customer support – ensuring customers are successful in solving whatever issues that drove them to your business

Increased revenue through marketing and clarity on ROI If you want to report on revenue and highlight ROI across the whole funnel, from the first marketing activity to the minute the sale closes, your teams need to understand how their work is directly impacting each other’s.

To share the message your customers want and in the

First and foremost, everyone’s priorities should be

way they want it, your sales and marketing teams must

revenue, profit and ROI. Then, if necessary, your teams

work collaboratively as part of a shortened sales cycle.

can report on separate KPIs like lead generation or

New tactics your aligned teams should leverage include:

vanity metrics.

» Audience segmentation – identifying subgroups within the target audience to deliver more tailored messaging

» Targeting – evaluating the potential and commercial attractiveness of each segment

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Tactics

1. Define common terms

How to align your sales and marketing

While this may sound like an obvious first action,

When marketing and sales can move beyond

the time to map out their core terms. According to

their differences and work in tandem, they can

CSO Insights, only 44% of companies have formally

simultaneously:

agreed on the definition of a qualified lead between

» Increase the revenue opportunity

sales and marketing.

» Shorten the sales and marketing cycle

Whether it’s a marketing lead (ML), marketing

» Cut costs and improve your cost of acquisition

the truth is that few companies prioritise taking

qualified lead (MQL), sales accepted lead (SAL) or sales qualified lead (SQL), your teams will require

Here are our seven key steps to begin

definitions of the terms they’ll be working with

working in alignment.

every day. Also, defining the different stages throughout the sales process is essential to ensure that all members of the sales and marketing team, and senior management, clearly understand where every opportunity is throughout the process.

In addition, each stage of the qualification process needs to be outlaid so that both sales and marketing can work towards qualifying each opportunity at each stage of the process.

Having a well-defined, integrated sales and marketing lead / opportunity handling process is essential for future success. Without this, you risk losing and squandering leads and opportunities, rendering your sales and marketing process inefficient and ineffective. The bigger picture consequences to your business are losses of vital revenue and profit, while increasing your cost of acquisition on a lost opportunity.

Whether you use BANTA (budget, authority, need, timeline, activity) to qualify your marketing leads, or adopt something more meaningful like MEDDIC (metrics, economic buyer, decision criteria, decision process, identify pain, and champion), it’s essential you have strongly defined, agreed qualification criteria for your sales and marketing process.

Without this, your success and therefore your ROI will be significantly compromised.

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2. Define the goals and strategy together – one team, one process Next, your sales and marketing need to clarify three keys: lead scoring, lead generation metrics, and sales and marketing processes. With siloed marketing and sales teams, different terminology can develop. A customerfacing marketing term for a product might not be favoured by the sales team.

In this situation, you’ll want to ensure that any differences in terminology are ironed out, helping you provide customers with a consistent sales and marketing approach.

Lead scoring To determine their sales-readiness, you need a methodology for ranking leads, based on:

» The interest they show in your business and your proposition

» Their current position in the buying cycle » Their fit in regard to your company Lead scoring will help to strengthen your revenue cycle, but it’s only effective if sales and marketing come together beforehand to define how they would like to score leads.

Lead generation KPIs:

Once you’ve formalised key lead generation metrics on

» Number of MQLs (marketing qualified leads)

lead scoring, your company will be ready to create key performance indicators (KPIs).

These are tangible benchmarks designed to help you

» Number of EIs (leads) » Number of SALs (sales accepted leads – workable opportunities)

measure your progress towards an objective.

Soft sales pipeline (top of funnel) KPIs:

You can also create overarching OKRs (objectives and

» PG ratio – for every £ spent on lead gen activity,

key results), which will help your sales and marketing teams to align their work to a common goal.

Marketing KPIs :

how much pipeline does this generate, as a ratio

» Marketing attribution – marketing attribution is a value that is assigned to supporting the sales process

» Raise profile

Examples of OKRs:

» Contribute to a sustainable pipeline

» Strengthen your reputation within your industry

to outline what specifically qualifies a lead as an MQL,

» Provide ongoing sales support

» Build your business’ profile and raise awareness

SAL, or SQL.

» Improve conversion

These lead generation metrics will emphasise everyone’s

» Recruit key accounts that deliver significant

Lead generation metrics Your marketing and sales teams should come together

individual involvement in moving the lead further down the funnel, with the end goal of closing the sale in sight.

Defined sales and marketing processes Your sales and marketing processes should be clearly stated for each phase of the revenue cycle. As these systems

lifetime value

» Percentage increase of lead generation within a certain timeframe

» Uptick in deals closed

become automated, everyone will perform at a higher level.

Tactical marketing KPIs:

Getting robust systems in place also provides some

» Delivered activity / work items against the agreed

documentation, so marketing can demonstrate how someone became an MQL, and sales has a record of their contact with that prospect.

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3. Create joint key performance indicators (KPIs)

marketing plan – key project deliverables

to a broad target market

» Manage YoY sustainable growth, without putting the core business at risk

» Recruit and secure the right type of accounts » Focus on accounts that will deliver significant lifetime value for the company

» Start to develop a sustainable marketing pipeline that supports the sales process

» Provide ongoing sales support and improve conversion

»N umber of campaigns delivered against the agreed marketing plan

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Supercharge your business growth

4. Replace the sales funnel with a revenue cycle

Sales Sales teams look at the bottom end of the funnel

Traditionally in sales, the process of moving potential

to convert leads into customers:

customers through the funnel involved a large audience

» SDRs (sales development reps) / internal sales

being sorted down into leads, prospects and finally – clients.

Today, this strategy is too simplistic and maintains the divide between sales and marketing. Both teams are

managers / internal sales

» BDRs (business development reps)

operating in a market where they need one another’s

» Pre-sales specialists

input to deliver the personalised attention that

» Sales executive

prospects expect.

As part of the revenue cycle, your business should be aiming for clients with lifetime value (LTV). Since most businesses have a significant cost of acquisition, it’s more financially viable to win accounts that provide you with a revenue yield YoY, rather than single transactions. With existing customers more likely to buy from you, your costs of transaction thereafter are

» High-touch sales (director level) Depending on your business and sales model, you may not require all of these roles.

Accounts The third team is separate from marketing and sales and comprises of:

significantly reduced.

» Key account managers / account managers

Typically, LTV can be measured between one to three

» Account directors

or one to five years. So, if you win an account, it’s worth

» Customer services

asking: how much do you believe that account will generate over a three to five year period? This will

» Customer success executives and managers

deliver much improved ROI and heavily reduce your cost

» Customer / client services directors

of acquisition and transaction. Your account strategy should be – acquire, develop and grow in order to deliver the maximum LTV. To successfully achieve this, you need a KAM (key account management) strategy.

Their focus is to review, contact, and qualify marketing-generated leads and deliver them to sales account executives.

These roles are often key to holding a company’s

5. Structure your team

sales and marketing teams together, focusing on

Next, you’ll want to establish well-defined, separate roles

the key business needs, rather than the granular or

and responsibilities for each team to fulfil, so there’s no

departmental tasks.

conflict between marketing and sales outputs.

Marketing At the top end of the funnel, these roles focus on building awareness, education, and soft pipeline (marketing pipeline):

» Demand generation » Product marketers » Content marketers » Digital marketing specialists » Brand specialists » Event marketing

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3. Stronger understanding of your target market Your marketing and sales must attract, nurture, and close deals; they therefore need to be on the same page about exactly who they are looking to reach.

When your aligned teams work as one, they can create more accurate buyer profiles.

A mutually agreed, clear understanding of your customer promotes shared ownership of the customer experience. This is what customers want, according to our research, where 70% of respondents said sales and marketing collaboration delivers a better buying experience for the customer.

Outcomes

By knowing who out of your teams to engage on the B2B buyer’s journey and when, you can develop a story thread that carries across all stakeholders and enables a smooth handoff between marketing and sales.

Internally, your teams will have a greater insight into the factors most likely to influence buyers at various stages of their customer journey.

What to expect from an integrated approach Here’s what you can expect when you integrate your sales and marketing teams.

1. A growth-oriented strategy with more targeted sales and marketing activities

2. Clearer mapping of the sales and marketing process

When sales and marketing take a holistic view of how

One of the biggest hurdles B2B organisations face is

to generate revenue, they can work together to form and launch campaigns aimed at achieving that goal.

Then, they can harness the wealth of insights and efficiencies yielded by this alignment to further refine and improve a high-level business strategy for growth.

So, by planning for, promoting, and enabling alignment throughout your company, it will naturally amplify the impact of both marketing and sales activities.

understanding the purchase process from the buyer’s point of view. This is critical for any organisations adopting an account-based approach.

Sales and marketing alignment removes the artificial funnel division between the two teams, and instead, leads to a holistic view of the buyer journey, from start to finish.

This mapping provides a much more realistic understanding of the prospect’s experience, reducing the risk of making the wrong assumptions about who is involved and in what ways from the buyer’s side.

With an accurate view of the customer journey, marketing and sales can more confidently define and execute campaigns designed to trigger and increase engagement.

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4. Cohesive customer intelligence Your marketing and sales teams will gather relevant knowledge about prospects as they interact with and

7. Better engagement between sales and marketing Unaligned sales and marketing teams execute their

observe them on their buying journey. If valuable

own activities, which can sometimes result in a

insights are openly shared between your teams,

fragmented experience for prospects. It also makes it

everyone will be able to work towards higher conversion

extremely difficult to pinpoint where exactly leads drop

and win rates.

off along the customer journey.

This is because marketing and sales will be better

On the other hand, when the two teams interact and

positioned to identify and engage with promising

brainstorm regularly, they can join forces to amplify the

potential customers. In fact, the more detailed the lead

impacts of their efforts.

record, the more accurately the sales team can route leads – and the less time they spend trying to figure out which ones to prioritise.

Information that’s worth sharing includes:

» Customer behaviours » Preferences » Interests » Motivations » Pain points » Opinions

Working together as a well-oiled machine, marketing and sales can:

» Launch campaigns designed for maximum impact » Handle leads fluidly » Engage prospects and wow potential buyers » Respond with agility and work in unison if market dynamics shift

» Capitalise on the opportunities generated » Deliver and achieve much better commercial outcomes

5. Better implementation of customer feedback When marketing and sales work collaboratively, they are more likely to prioritise integrating their systems so they can share and respond to customer data.

With enhanced access to customer information, it will be easier for the right people within your teams to act only when the prospect is ready to purchase, and contact them via their preferred method.

6. Better support from business leaders When an executive team sees the commitment from marketing and sales to coordinate their efforts, they will be motivated to help ensure the success of that alignment.

Business leaders can offer:

» Clear, ongoing communication about the importance of collaboration

» Dedicated resources to ensure and maintain a united approach

» Initiatives to break down departmental silos, such as integrating all necessary tools and even modifying compensation plans to accurately reflect and reward the combined efforts, and drive the right behaviour across both your sales and marketing teams

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4. W ork together to drive quality leads Closing a sale is a shared responsibility. Your teams need to work towards the end goal of getting higher quality leads to enable high-profit sales at an increased rate.

You’ll want to create a detailed lead record to help

Key takeaways

sales teams accurately route leads and spend less time figuring out which ones to prioritise. Before this, you’ll need to have clearly defined your lead scoring metrics, so sales and marketing know exactly how leads are ranked:

» EIs (leads) » MQLs (marketing qualified leads) » SALs (sales accepted leads – workable opportunities) 5. Set shared goals Once you’ve formalised key lead generation metrics on lead scoring, your company will be ready to set goals with key performance indicators (KPIs). These are tangible benchmarks designed to help you measure your progress towards aN objective. Examples of

Skyrocket your business’ success Ready to instil this approach into your business? Here’s a roundup of the tips and tricks we’ve used for our own sales and marketing alignment, as well as observations from many other businesses.

Your single marketing and sales toolkit

marketing KPIs include:

» Continued communication about the importance of an aligned sales and marketing approach

» Allocation of dedicated resources to maintain an aligned way of working

» Promotion of initiatives to break down departmental silos,

Ultimately, your business needs a single, joined up,

e.g. integrating all tools, and modifying compensation

sales and marketing strategy. Every single one of your

plans to reflect and reward combined efforts

sales and marketing processes should be well-defined and meticulously documented. That way, everyone in your business can follow these with ease, helping you maintain robust continuity and offer a seamless approach to customers.

An aligned approach will help you not only win higher value clients and increase your revenue, but it’ll also give you a greater insight into your target market and support better engagement between your sales and marketing teams.

3. Check-in regularly – one team When marketing and sales openly share valuable insights about prospects on their buying journey, your

» Recruit key accounts that deliver significant lifetime value

» Percentage increase of lead generation within a certain timeframe

» Improve conversion You can also create overarching OKRs (objectives and key results), which will help your sales and marketing teams to align their work to a common goal. Examples of OKRs include:

teams can work towards higher conversion and win rates.

» Strengthen your reputation within your industry

This is because they’ll be better positioned to identify and

» Build your business’ profile and raise awareness to

engage with promising potential customers.

With key customer insights from sales, you’ll find that marketing would do a better job of raising awareness and educating your target audience, passing better qualified leads over to sales.

a broad target market

» Manage YoY sustainable growth, without putting the core business at risk 6. Report on revenue You should replace your sales funnel with a revenue

7. Use sales insights from closed sales

cycle, so you can understand how marketing and sales

When marketing and sales work collaboratively,

contribute to revenue. Your marketing and sales teams

they can integrate their systems to share and

need to report back on revenue, rather than the leads

respond to customer data. With enhanced

themselves. To increase your revenue opportunity, you

access to customer information, it will be easier

2. Invest in strong leadership

want to aim to win clients with high lifetime value (LTV),

for the right people within your teams to act

Marketing and sales need a leader who can actively

as these will provide you with revenue YoY, rather than

only when the prospect is ready to purchase,

help ensure the success of their alignment. Business

through a single transaction.

and contact them via their preferred method.

Here are our top seven tips to get started on your business’ sales and marketing alignment: 1. Choose the right sales and marketing automation and reporting tools

Your sales team would understand how marketing has driven the lead and have a clearer strategy going forwards of their involvement to move the prospect closer to the point of sale.

leaders and senior management can encourage desirable behaviour across these teams, through: 19

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We are YOUR marketing team that delivers the growth and scale that YOU need.

Our marketing teams are experts in delivering marketing for scale-up businesses.

Equals Five’s broad and deep range of marketing experts means that we can deliver fully integrated sales and marketing strategies and programmes that are more than the sum of their parts.

All of our marketing specialists and experts are highly qualified and experienced, we only recruit the best, and our success is intrinsically linked to yours.

Why Equals Five?

and not an art. » We are your own dedicated marketing team, at a fraction of the cost. » We provide all the marketing specialists, and experts, that you need to help you grow and scale your business. The big difference is that all these

Whether your aim is to generate sales pipeline, build

experts work for you part-time, under contract, so you

your brand reputation, open up new routes to market

only pay for these marketing specialists when you

or to better exploit your existing customer base, your

need them.

marketing team from Equals Five will help you to build and execute those marketing strategies and programmes that meet those goals, and deliver tangible business results for your company.

A complete marketing team for the same cost as a Senior Marketing Manager!*

» We understand that marketing is a science,

» We really get to know your business because we are part of your business! We are part of your team. We work for you, we are committed, focused and dedicated.

Imagine having an experienced, and complete, marketing team for the same cost as a fully weighted, full-time, senior marketing manager!*

Are you ready to take a giant leap forward with your marketing?

Are you ready to build your dream marketing team? Are you ready to take a giant leap forward in the way you market and scale your business?

Then please get in touch for an informal chat on how we can help you achieve your aspirations for your business.

Please contact us by emailing us at hello@equalsfive.co.uk or by calling us on +44 (0) 1202 201930

*Costs based upon a fully employed senior marketing manager, with a London weighting, in January 2023.

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