Are your sales and marketing team working in sync? Do they work to the same strategy and goals, sharing insights and delivering campaigns as a united front? If not, your company could be missing out on a major opportunity to improve business performance, sales productivity, top-line growth and ROI.
Sales and marketing misalignment is very common, where businesses set up and run each team as separate functions – and they never quite come together. But if more organisations fully realised the huge benefits of alignment as a business growth strategy, this would change very quickly.
Here are just a few of the many arguments for cross-functional teams pulling together around a single revenue cycle and the pursuit of common goals:
Shortening the sales cycle
The more complex your B2B buying process, the longer it takes and the more resources you have to deploy. By bringing together sales and marketing, you can meet customers where they are and streamline the buying journey. There are lots of ways to do this, including syncing segmentation and targeting, nurturing, and engagement.
Shared insight and expertise
It’s a ludicrous waste of resources to have sales and marketing working on the same research separately. Not only can both teams benefit from each other’s data and insights, but they can also share expertise. For example, marketing can advise on the most effective language to use to engage prospects, while sales can share common customer objections to a product – which marketing can use to develop better content.
Simplified workflows
This benefit is quite an obvious one. Why have sales and marketing logging into separate systems, when they can work from the same dashboard? This also means shared targets, insights, and information, with one central platform to help everyone stay on the same page. The tools already exist – all you have to do is choose the right system for your organisation.
Increasing revenue growth
According to research from the Aberdeen Group, embracing a united sales and marketing approach can lead to an increase of 32% in year-on-year revenue growth. Even more impressively, research from Wheelhouse Advisors has shown a 208% boost to marketing revenue, while MarketingProfs uncovered a 38% higher sales win rate.
It’s pretty difficult to argue with these kinds of statistics. In fact, in the face of such persuasive findings, you may even be wondering – why haven’t I prioritised alignment in my company growth strategy already?
A better customer experience
Consistency is key when delivering an exceptional customer experience. This is where alignment between sales and marketing can make a real difference from the customer’s perspective. Confusion, miscommunication, and repetition can be eliminated, replaced by smoother transitions from one department to the next. Crucially, it can mean a smoother, more seamless, and enjoyable sales journey for the customer.
Understand the many advantages of sales and marketing alignment as a business growth strategy, but don’t know where to start? We can help. Get in touch with our marketing and lead generation experts here at IT Focus.
