Companies that break down silos across departments see smoother processes, happier employees and more success. That’s no big secret. But it does beg the question: If cross-functional collaboration is something most organizations strive for, why are so many sales and marketing teams misaligned?
Perhaps it’s because the two groups have more in common than one would think. After all, these teams both strive to nurture a robust pipeline of quality leads likely to convert to sales. But both sales and marketing professionals often lean on very different skillsets, and report to different leaders. If those leaders aren’t on the same page with their strategies and objectives, their ironclad pipelines can become leaky and ineffective.
To see how companies can better unite their marketing and sales teams, Built In Austin connected with two local marketing leaders. They shared how they keep their teams in step with sales, and how this collaboration ultimately brings companywide success.
Imprivata’s remote-access platform aims to provide companies with more security and control when using third-party support vendors on mission-critical software.
In your experience, what are the main causes for misalignment between sales and marketing teams?
In my experience, misalignment between sales and marketing happens when the two teams are pitted against each other, usually due to differing organizational key performance indicators (KPIs). This can turn into a competition to get credit for wins, or worse, as a blame game for losses.
The most common misalignment occurs when marketing is directed to hit a certain number of marketing qualified leads (MQLs) without clear KPIs surrounding pipeline generation. In this environment, marketing teams can actually be incentivized to push for quantity over quality.
When both teams are committed to mindful action, practice and an open feedback loop, sales and marketing can work together.”
How do you create a common set of metrics to measure success that is understandable to both teams?
I believe the most important metric for sales and marketing teams to share is pipeline generation. This completely removes any incentive for marketing to become a lead engine that is only focused on driving a high volume of names.
When the pipeline is the goal, marketing teams have to look beyond the appeal of a quick win, and spend real time and effort on the optimization of audience targeting. While sales teams may need to practice some patience in this environment, they’ll be rewarded with high-quality leads that they can more easily convert to opportunities and, in an ideal world, close with a higher selling price.
What’s the best way to maintain alignment between sales and marketing teams in the long term?
One of Imprivata’s key pillars among our broader growth team, which encompasses both sales and marketing, is the idea that inputs lead to outputs. When both teams are committed to mindful action and practice an open feedback loop, sales and marketing can work together to continuously optimize the full funnel for the largest pipeline build. This means consistent, transparent conversations around which marketing lead sources are producing the highest quality MQLs, regular title and industry reviews to track trending wins, and a willingness on both sides to share accountability.
Redgate is out to solve database woes through its suite of tools created specifically with Microsoft Data Platform users in mind. Automation of data deployments, data protection and performance monitoring are just a few of Redgate’s offerings.
In your experience, what are the main causes for misalignment between sales and marketing teams?
Misalignment between sales and marketing is nothing new because they are different functions both reporting to different members of executive leadership. We’re all, however, part of the commercial team, so alignment is key to our success.
At Redgate, sales and marketing used to work very differently: Sales lead the way in account-based selling to enterprises, while marketing focused on supporting our transactional SMB business. In 2017, we introduced account-based marketing (ABM) to bridge the gap, but other cracks started to show and our ABM and enterprise sales teams remained siloed from the rest of marketing.
To reduce the friction, we restructured our marketing function. Our field marketing team now partners with local teams to plan sales and marketing initiatives based on strategy and dollar value of our accounts in the region. This enables sales and marketing to align on the ideal customer profile, target accounts and the entire buyer journey — from acquisition to expansion and retention.
This restructuring created a strong alignment with sales and a feedback loop that gives us the flexibility to pivot based on the needs of our sales teams.
How do you create a common set of metrics to measure success that is understandable to both teams?
It’s important that sales and marketing leadership look at the same thing, even if we all favor “simple but flawed” over “complex but precise.” We focus on pipeline and revenue, and report on business metrics that everyone can understand.
Most data has its shortcomings, but we don’t nit-pick over attribution. Both sales and marketing efforts involve a combination of activities that equate to pipeline and revenue. During our quarterly business reviews, the marketing team reports on the shared successes across our strategic priorities, such as core segments or solution areas.
For example, if we’ve targeted a specific vertical, we report on our collective pipeline and revenue numbers across sales, field marketing and central marketing activities. We’re all working towards the same goal and we’re all accountable.
We’re all working towards the same goal and we’re all accountable.”
What’s the best way to maintain alignment between sales and marketing teams in the long term?
We meet regularly to track progress. Sales and marketing leadership reviews leads, pipeline and revenue numbers on a weekly and monthly basis, both at a regional and global level. These regular commercial alignment meetings help us identify trends, resolve problems and find a solution together.
These meetings also mean we can spot any issues. For example, we recently noticed a drop in the pipeline for one of our core solutions. There were multiple causes, but by working together, we fixed some lead allocation issues, equipped our business development representatives with SalesLoft email cadences, introduced a sales incentive program and tweaked some campaign messaging. We were able to act quickly and pivot where needed, and the pipeline was back on track the following month.
None of these things can happen without joint planning and a constant feedback loop. Sales and marketing have to collaborate in five key ways to maintain alignment: Develop messaging, plays and campaigns together; test on small audiences to see if it’s resonating; deploy campaigns in a scalable way; monitor campaign performance and get pipeline visibility; analyze data and feedback to expand, tweak or pivot the activity of both teams. Do these things well and the revenue will follow.
