Top Sales Leaders Weigh in on the Value of Sales and Marketing Alignment

Just 57% of companies actually hit their revenue targets, according to CSO Insights. One of the top reasons? Marketing and Sales just aren’t properly aligned.

Imagine a marketer arrogantly boasting that “Marketing is driving sales around here,” or a sales rep complaining about stale leads or worthless marketing collateral. Sound familiar? At many companies, salespeople and marketers work together about as well as Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. But when marketers and salespeople actually get on the same page, the results can be powerful.

How powerful? According to the TAS Group, overall revenue achievement is a full 25% higher at companies where Sales and Marketing are perceived as working well together. That fully aligns with the experiences of our customers as well. Given those dramatic figures, can your company not afford to demolish sales and marketing silos?

Transforming your sales and marketing teams into BFFs is often easier said than done. In our latest eBook, we asked some top sales experts to reveal their top secret for boosting sales productivity. Not surprisingly, several sales leaders espoused the virtues of Sales and Marketing alignment. Here are some of the ways they recommended for businesses to align their teams.

Align Marketing And Sales To Maximize Customer Engagement Through The Buying Process

“The major shift going on in sales and marketing is realigning our customer engagement process around dramatic changes in the way our customers buy. This is driving major changes in our marketing and sales processes, more closely integrating each, eliminating the ‘Chinese wall’ that has existed. Overlay this with leveraging marketing automation, analytics and other technologies that enable us to refine our communications with customers and prospects over time, getting them the right information addressing the right issues at the right time. We have a long way to go, but leading organizations are seeing profound results. This integrated engagement process will be the key differentiator in moving forward.”

-Dave Brock
President, Partners in EXCELLENCE

Sales Reps Need Real-Time Access to Marketing Data

“When working with my customers, I always stress that aligning sales with marketing is the best way to shorten sales cycles. To that end, I’ve been noticing increased adoption of solutions that can automatically share marketing data with sales reps in real time. For example, marketing automation tools are increasingly used to alert sales reps when prospects are most qualified. Sales reps can gain a real-time view of when prospects download eBooks, fill out forms and engage in other activities that warrant immediate follow-up. Sales and marketing alignment doesn’t only help reps prioritize prospects, but also enables more successful sales conversations. Sales reps need to be able to quickly access marketing materials such as blogs, articles and statistics that help them prove their expertise.”

-Kathleen Steffey
CEO, NavigaServices.com

If You Really Want to Optimize Sales Performance, Bring the Phone into your Sales and Marketing Automation Systems

“Sales and marketing automation involves using technology to organize, automate and synchronize efforts across an entire business. Yet when these technologies intersect with traditional phone systems, these processes grind to a halt.

Why should we care? Because phone calls are not only getting more important, but companies can also expect more of them.

We know that for many industries, inbound calls from marketing campaigns are 10X more likely to close than web leads. And don’t think for a moment that phone calls are dying, because the data from Google, BIA/Kelsey and others suggests the exact opposite. There are 30 billion inbound sales calls every year, and that number is projected to grow to 70 billion by 2016. Businesses will be making more outbound calls too, as inside sales hiring are outpacing traditional sales hiring by 15 to 1.

The best companies understand these statistics and are already taking the next step, which is bringing the telephone – the most important and yet most ignored piece of technology – into their automation strategies.

These companies are automating manual phone-related sales tasks such as outbound dialing, call logging and recording, call tracking, intelligent routing, voicemail and more. And as an end result, they are experiencing exponential improvements in sales productivity and topline revenue growth.”

-Howard Brown
Founder & CEO, Revenue.io

To read more sales productivity tips that can help your business close deals, download our free eBook 20 Top Sales Leaders Reveal Their Biggest Productivity Secrets.