Uniting sales and marketing to drive success

Account Cultivation and Growth / Thought Leadership / 28th November 2022 / By James Mollard

“It’s never been more important to align these crucial teams, so you can attract, win and grow more business to accelerate your way through the current economic challenges. But where do you start? A new study and ABX offer clues…
” James Mollard - Growth and Strategy Director JPC

We’ve emerged from the pandemic into an uncertain economic environment marked by rising inflation and geopolitical turmoil, where competition is at an all-time high.

Success demands standing out from your rivals by clearly articulating your offer and engaging with your audience as effectively as possible. This requires the whole company firing on all cylinders, and firmly aligned behind key goals and strategies, particularly sales and marketing. Yet many companies struggle to align these crucial teams, with a new survey, The State of Marketing and Sales Alignment 2022, shedding light on the reasons why.

WHY ACT NOW?

Before we dig into this study, let’s underline the importance of getting your sales and marketing ducks in a row – just in case you were in any doubt. Two recent pieces of research will do the trick.

Some 42% of B2B marketers set sales and marketing alignment as their top priority towards optimising lead generation, the quality of which is obviously crucial to winning more business. This was according to the 2022 Demand Generation Benchmark Survey.

Meanwhile, 42% of B2B marketers also believe “misaligned efforts and goals between sales and marketing teams” undermine optimising the customer experience, according to The RevOps Difference 2022 report.

So, where should you start sowing the seeds of S&M harmony?

BETTER LEADS AND FOLLOWING UP

With 43% of sales professionals saying their marketing colleagues target the wrong leads and 38% of marketers frustrated with salespeople’s attempts to follow them up, it’s clearly time to start building bridges in lead generation. Some 29% of salespeople also question marketers’ ability to educate leads effectively.

DRIVING COLLABORATION

A fifth of sales professionals find it hard to work effectively with their marketing counterparts. This compares to 30% of marketers who say they can’t collaborate with the sales team as well as they would like. Over half of both teams believe improving communication would help, with around a third saying greater cooperation between departments is needed, along with more closely aligning their definitions of success and strategic goals.

BEATING THE SYSTEM

The second-most cited problem by salespeople was the extra work caused by underperforming tools or systems from their marketing team. Meanwhile, three-quarters of all survey respondents believe their tools cause misalignment between marketing and sales. What’s more, marketers’ biggest issue with their sales teams was insufficient or inaccurate data. So, you may be investing in new systems and tools, but it’s vital to check they are having the desired effect.

FACING THE CONSEQUENCES

Underlining the findings of the other studies mentioned above, the biggest consequence of a failure to align marketing and sales efforts was found to be sales leads that don’t convert. This is clearly a major business issue that not only affects revenues, but also wastes valuable sales and marketing resources – essentially pursuing duds.

Another key finding was that only a fifth of organisations surveyed had the ability to track the entire customer journey, but those that do reported significantly better customer experiences.

CLOSING THE GAP

This research shows that you can bring your sales and marketing teams closer together by ensuring they have the right compatible and integrated tools and systems at their disposal, along with the most accurate data at their fingertips to drive collaboration and improve sales leads.

However, whilst tools and technology are important, you don’t want to miss the human connection that remains the heart of transformative sales and marketing.

Developing account-based experiences (ABX) in the right way brings together sales and marketing to unify their efforts to target your high-value accounts to attract, win and grow more business in a more human way.

This is achieved by working with ALL your teams, from sales, marketing and beyond, and forensically identifying and researching key stakeholders. They are then engaged highly personalised and creative content to guide them through the customer journey, from raising awareness to driving purchase intent.

This not only brings you closer to and helps you convert the customers that matter most, but also aligns sales and marketing to help you kick start your fightback against the current economic conditions.

At JPC, we’ll help you raise your gaze above the sales and marketing parapet, explode the silos and head towards an altogether more holistic company-wide account-based approach. Get in touch if you would like to know more.