Aligning Your Sales and Marketing Teams

Peanut butter and jelly. Romeo and Juliet. Batman and Robin. Sales and marketing?

Not all pairs are created equal. While those last two should be as close as peas in a pod, sometimes, for any number of reasons, things get out of whack. In this blog, we’re going to take a look at what it takes to get your business's dynamic duo in lockstep to find success.

Understanding the Importance of Alignment

In its 2023 State of Sales Report, Hubspot found that businesses with aligned sales and marketing teams are 67 percent more efficient at closing deals. There are many studies that likewise shine a spotlight on the importance of sales and marketing team goal alignment. And things like key messages, growth markets, audiences, and customer experience priorities are all a part of that alignment.

The Impact on Revenue Growth

There is a clear and direct repercussion to aligning sales and marketing teams: profit. Don't take our word for it. Studies show...

• A 32 percent year-over-year revenue growth compared to those that aren’t aligned.
• Sales and marketing departments grow 19 percent faster and are 15 percent more profitable.
• An average of 30 percent savings on customer acquisition costs.
• Up to 36 percent greater retention rates that boost customer lifetime values by 20 percent or more.

In the immoral words of Jay-Z, numbers don’t lie. Alignment isn’t just important, it’s a game changer.

Improving Customer Experience

One of the most impactful ways to align your teams is to engage both in a collaborative customer experience (CE) analysis and roadmapping exercise. Start with getting your team leads together to examine the marketing and sales touchpoints experienced by your key customers. That means looking at all the phases of CE from awareness, consideration, decision, and advocacy, to identify areas of strength as well as areas of weakness. No CE is perfect. This exercise allows you to shore up the weaknesses using the unified talent, time, and resources of both teams.

Strategies for Achieving Alignment

Establishing Clear Communication Channels

More than likely, few members of either team want another weekly meeting on their plates. Take if from us, we know. “Did this need to be a meeting?” is the siren complaint of the corporate world. We're sorry, but also, see our above points on revenue growth, efficiency, and savings. Yes, it's worth the meeting.

The good news is you don’t need lengthy meetings in the conference room to establish and maintain meaningful alignment communication. Some quick points on how to do just that:

• Define tactics to improve the weaker areas of your CE 
• Identify project owners to collaborate on improving them
• Arrange “speed huddles” for project teams at regular intervals to quickly report on progress, address challenges, and brainstorm ways to overcome them 
• Bonus when there's time: use that time to share quick wins and milestone achievements

Setting Shared Goals and Metrics

Early on, it’s important to establish achievable goals. Huddle up and agree on some key performance indicators (KPIs) to provide the teams with some easy wins they can accomplish, and larger goals to reach for in the future. Consider setting incentives for hitting KPIs and achieving milestones. Impactful KPIs and milestones could include increases in:

• Generation of qualified leads
• Conversion rates
• Campaign and media spend efficiency
• Savings in customer acquisition costs
• Customer service efficiency from handling less complaints

Overcoming Common Challenges

Bridging Team Gaps

Let’s be honest, when sales stagnate or decline, there’s going to be some finger-pointing between the sales and marketing teams. Marketing probably believes they’re building awareness, but sales isn’t closing the deals. Meanwhile, sales likely thinks they could close more deals if marketing made better campaigns. Chicken or egg?

When that happens, it’s not because they’re fundamentally different cultures (sales and marketing are far more peanut butter and jelly than oil and water). This kind of friction happens because each perceive their resources are thin, and they’re doing everything possible to hit departmental goals. Each side ends up with the same thought: "We’re not the problem, they are!" The truth, usually, is that neither party is directly responsible—HR is.

Just kidding.

Or are we?

Handling Conflicting Priorities

The gap that typically fosters misalignment isn’t necessarily a lack of resources, it’s often resources that aren’t prioritized toward meaningful improvements. It can also come from conflicting incentives. 

Sales might be incentivized to sell more units against stiff competition. Discounts or price cuts ensue, margins get thin, which leads to marketing budgets getting thinner and thinner. Needless to say, your marketing team isn’t going to like that. 

On the marketing side, they might be incentivized to grow impressions, gain new followers, or get more clicks. That leads to investing in top-of-funnel tactics and broader messages to grow awareness in a much broader market that sales teams aren’t always prepared to convert.

The solution is simple, but not easy: Align incentives, and you’ll align priorities. When you align priorities, you can align and focus resources where they’ll drive the most revenue.

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