Businesses that achieve marketing and sales alignment are able to:

• Increase revenue by 32%
• Achieve a 20% annual growth rate, 
• Gain 36% more customers, and
• Enjoy 38% higher win rates when interacting with leads!

Does that sound like a dream you’re trying to catch onto? If so, sales and marketing alignment is where it’s at. Now you might have heard of this before, or maybe you think sales and marketing are the same concept in two words. But the truth is… they aren’t!

Sales and marketing are different aspects of a business, with different objectives and ways of operating. That said, your business only truly benefits when sales and marketing are like sister teams, working cohesively.

Today, only 8% of company leaders can proudly say they have sales and marketing alignment. If you’re searching for an untapped edge against your competition, this blog will reveal all the benefits of sales and marketing alignment. First things first…

How are sales and marketing linked?

While you might initially believe sales and marketing have the same goal, it’s not true. Each of them has a different function, purpose, and goal. And that means, you can’t make one do the other’s job! So if they’re not the same, how are they linked?

According to Douglas Karr, marketing is like fishing. Sales-driven organizations are all about taking action and that means you’ll want to take your boat into the water and wait for the fish to bite on your fishing rods. 

However, marketing-driven organizations will first find out where the fish are biting the most (who your target audience is and where to find them) and what type of bait to use (their pain points). And voilà, that’s the recipe to a successful day at the sea— or your business, at least!

Hence, marketing efforts tell you more about who your customers are, what they’re looking for, and what type of message they will receive positively. Furthermore, they will work with copy, ads, and much more to build long-lasting brand awareness. 

Once that is done, the sales team takes over, interacting with the customers that your marketing efforts bring over. Their sole goal is communication with customers directly to sell your product or service.

How do you know if your sales and marketing teams aren’t aligned?

There can be many causes for your sales and marketing teams to be misaligned. A lack of internal language between these 2 teams, a lack of understanding of the company objectives, and an obvious disconnect are all reasons why your marketing and sales teams are misaligned!

And because these are qualitative causes, it’s not as easy to recognize. However, there are a few tell-tale signs of sales marketing misalignment. 

Some sights to keep an eye out for when it comes to misalignment are: 

• You’re struggling with low-quality leads
• Your salespeople disqualify a large chunk of MQLs
• Marketing resources aren’t used by your sales team
• Sales and marketing teams act as independent entities with no mutual efforts
• Customers don’t engage with your ads, content, or emails even after you increase your spending budget 

6 benefits of sales and marketing alignment

When you figure out the secret to aligning sales and marketing strategies, life becomes easier. A vague statement if we put it that way, right? Here are 6 alignment benefits behind that exact statement:

1. Improved customer journey and service

One of the biggest problems sales teams face is looking at interactions from the buyer’s point of view. Shedding that inside-out perspective is hard, especially when it’s attempted without sales and marketing alignment! 

Sales marketing alignment perishes the funnel division between sales and marketing, allowing your company to view the customer journey and experience holistically. With a realistic understanding, you reduce the risk of making wrong assumptions or providing a negative customer experience.

2. Improved revenue

Who doesn’t like some extra green coming into your bank? That opportunity sits between a balanced sales and marketing alignment! 

One of the biggest benefits of sales and marketing alignment is that it can enable your business to flourish. When these two fronts are united, there’s a higher chance for you to achieve your revenue and ROI goals. 

According to Hubspot, the misalignment of these two teams costs companies $1 trillion every year. However, when they align, Hubspot found that organizations close 38% more deals, get 27% faster profit growth, and even enjoy 208% revenue growth! 

3. A well-rounded strategy and execution

If you want to focus on the big picture and are a fan of strategic planning, you need sales and marketing alignment. In simpler words, with this alignment, you get a long-term benefit. Through proper planning, communication, and alignment, businesses can amplify the combined efforts of both teams into a refined strategy. 

4. More feedback from customers

Of course, both marketing and sales teams have a boatload of valuable information about customers. But when communication lines open, you now have the power to create shared and cohesive customer intelligence— think higher conversions and win rates!

Through sales marketing management, the two teams can share crucial insights about customer behavior, preferences, opinions, and even pain points! Adding these details will ultimately result in your sales teams routing leads more accurately than before. 

Furthermore, this feedback and line of communication opens up the possibility that your salespeople will spend less time doing the boring data input tasks (a task that makes salespeople hate CRMs). Plus, with an integrated and shared CRM system, it gets easier for the right people to act at the right time. 

5. A better understanding of who your customers are

It turns out that only 15% of companies without marketing and sales alignment create a buyer persona. But 58% of companies that are aligning sales and marketing strategies create these personas to make informed decisions!

Without sales and marketing alignment, both teams interact with the same potential buyer in different ways. While this also sends mixed signals to the buyer, it also means both of them have different understandings about the buyer. Sales and marketing alignment makes it possible for different information to be centralized, allowing for improved decision-making!

Here is a quick overview of what each team understands about buyers:

6. No more pointing fingers 

Now this last point is less about statistics and more about the quality and toxicity of your workplace. When two people don’t get along in the workplace, it’s very easy for animosity to build up, hindering productivity and collaboration. The same can be said about two misaligned teams!

Every time something goes wrong, both teams will blame each other instead of taking responsibility for the result. The sales team will say that marketing isn’t doing enough and try to dictate how and where resources should’ve been focused. And marketing team will point out that the sales reps are lazy in terms of collecting valuable data for lead generation!

Now imagine when both departments work together, you eliminate the ability for them to point any fingers— unless it’s on themselves and their own combined efforts! This ensures that individuals are held accountable and learn teamwork. 

Final Thoughts

Sales and marketing alignment supercharges your business to achieve more with simple changes. If you’re looking for revenue growth, a well-defined strategy, and selling like never before, you need 2 things by your side. 

One of them is sales and marketing alignment. The other one is Jaldi CRM, your one-stop solution for lead management, CRM reports, and everything sales. Unlike other options out there, we make things simple, efficient, and hassle-free! Book a demo today and notice the difference yourself!