Breezy Hill insights and examples of effective alignment strategies and their results
Marketing and sales alignment—everyone’s talking about it, but what does that process look like, and are the results worth the effort? It’s more than just enhancing collaboration and communication between your teams. The process examines the intricacies of aligning brand messages, content strategies, and offerings to ensure a mutually beneficial partnership. By getting marketing and sales teams on the same page (and keeping them there), you ensure all efforts support marketing and sales initiatives while the business moves towards shared ROI and growth objectives.
We’ve helped our fair share of businesses align their marketing and sales teams to bring in more MQLs and SQLs, feed their sales funnel, and increase conversions, and we’re sharing with you the top examples of effective alignment approaches.
Keep reading to hear from Laura Hill, Breezy Hill owner, and CSO, on the importance of marketing and sales alignment in our first of three Breezy Insights.
Sometimes the easiest way to talk about how important marketing and sales alignment is is to take a closer look at what happens when the teams are not aligned.
For example, we worked with a company whose sales team was seasoned and on point. Their processes and procedures were established, and the team understood the needs and expectations of the company. The marketing team, on the contrary, was smaller and more junior in comparison to the sales team and had not received the same investment. Because of this, marketing didn’t have the depth of experience needed to fully support the needs of the sales department. These teams became extremely siloed, with marketing often working on their own without input from sales, or the product team.
Because the marketing and sales teams were so distant from each other, marketing didn’t have the same understanding that sales had regarding prospects and their pain points. Without this insight, marketing couldn’t produce the content and assets needed to attract leads and move them into the company’s sales funnel. This lack of communication also meant that the marketing team didn’t know if their campaigns were effective or not.
Unfortunately, it’s not that unusual to see a marketing team siloed from sales and even product teams. To fix this, leadership needs to be involved in fostering alignment and interdepartmental relationships.
To help bridge the gap between marketing and sales, the company brought in an experienced VP of marketing to help align the team internally. They invested in training their existing marketing team members on their tech stack and created procedures for the sales and marketing teams to partner on initiatives. Additionally, the company hired marketing resources to support marketing automation and data analytics and reporting.
The biggest change came when marketing was able to leverage automation and systems for campaigns in support of the sales efforts. By simplifying their tracking and data sources and working within the same CRM and marketing automation, the two were able to share data and ensure key points were being tracked. Shared insight meant a shared understanding of what was and was not working and what could be tweaked to ensure the success of everyone’s efforts.
With this investment in its marketing team, the company created a powerful group of marketers that met the needs and expectations of a coordinated sales and business development effort.
If marketing and sales teams aren’t talking to each other, sharing data, and supporting each other, your company is missing out on the chance to drive leads and conversion. Zooming out, if your teams aren’t collaborating, then there is a chance they may fall short of growth and ROI expectations for the team. Give them the opportunity to succeed by getting everyone on the same page and driving towards one common goal.
Breezy Hill Marketing experts can help you foster alignment between your teams. Schedule a consultation with us today.
