Dear Sales and Marketing Professionals,
Driving RESULTS and BUSINESS GROWTH in today’s competitive landscape isn’t just about having great Sales and Marketing Teams performing their INDIVIDUAL roles well.
It’s about Sales and Marketing operating together in parallel, fostering collaboration, aligning on unified goals, and feedback loops to achieve business success.
Here’s why:
In many organisations, sales and marketing teams aren’t aligned, despite both departments being described as two sides of the same coin.
Often these teams are misaligned, leading to inefficiencies, lost opportunities, and inconsistent messaging and objectives.
Here’s the proof:
A report by IDC Global, shows that companies with misaligned sales and marketing teams lose an average of 10% in annual revenue.
Well, surely there’s a way to fix this…
Let’s dive into the importance of aligning sales and marketing by breaking down their roles, exploring the impact of misalignment, and showcasing strategies to bring them together.
Table Of Contents
What’s The Difference Between Sales And Marketing?
We know what you might be wondering: “Marketing and sales must be similar, right?”
Perhaps on the same mission. However, in many industries, these departments might be structured differently and have dissimilar roles.
But the concept is still the same. In simple terms:
Marketing: Creating Awareness and Demand
What is the role of a marketer? The quick answer is that the role of a marketer is to create demand for a product or service and get an audience’s attention.
The main focus of marketing is to identify and attract potential customers through strategies designed to build awareness and generate interest in your brand.
However, marketing, whilst recognised by organisations as being paramount, can often be misconceived and mistrusted by practitioners in the field.
Think of marketing as the matchmaker—it finds potential customers, piques their interest, and sets them up for the sales team.
Sales: Driving Conversations and building relationships
What is the role of sales in an organisation?
Quite simply, a Salesperson usually takes over when a lead is ready for direct engagement.
A Sales role is viewed as the journey of building relationships with a customer from initial contact through to the finished product or solution.
The Key Responsibilities Of Sales Include:
- Evaluating a potential lead’s needs and readiness to purchase.
- Continually communicated with the customer to solve their problem.
- The negotiation of terms and agreements to make the deal happen!
In summary, sales are the closer, turning leads into loyal, revenue-driving customers.
The Disconnect between Sales and Marketing
Here’s the Problem:
While it’s marketing’s job to cast a wide net to attract potential customers, sales roles zero in more on those potential leads ready to purchase.
If sales and marketing aren’t coherent with each other, you get:
- Inconsistent Messaging – mismatched campaigns and product focuses confusing customers.
- Wasted Resources – Marketing delivers leads that sales deem unqualified.
- Missed Opportunities – Leads that could be likely to make a purchase falling through the cracks.
And get this – according to HubSpot, 79% of marketing leads never convert to sales due to a lack of effective lead nurturing.
This highlights the missed opportunities when businesses fail to nurture leads properly, leaving prospects to drift away without any follow-up or engagement.
Most Marketing will create leads not sales. And companies that have created an efficient communication channel between their marketing & sales departments, are more able to successfully enable the sales department to convert marketing efforts.
— The Voice of Marketing (@LeboLion_SA) June 30, 2021
Lead Nurturing – A Powerful Tool For Turning Prospects into Customers
Here’s something the sales and marketing department should always have at the back of their minds.
Lead Nurturing.
Lead nurturing is all about building relationships with your prospects. It’s delivering the right message at the right time to guide them toward a purchase.
Why does it matter?
- Businesses that rock at lead nurturing see a 20% boost in sales opportunities (HubSpot).
- Nurtured leads are worth 47% more than non-nurtured ones.
Think about that. You’re not just chasing leads—you’re creating high-value customers.
How Can Sales and Marketing Work Together?
Here are six ways sales and marketing can come together to increase sales efficiently, revenue and profitable customer relationships:
1. Speak The Customer’s Language
Nobody within a company speaks to customers and understands the language they use more than the sales team.
They’re on the frontlines, hearing what people want and how they say it.
Take that intel and use it to create marketing campaigns that hit the bullseye.
Example: You’re a medium-sized landscaping company whose services target homeowners seeking to have their gardens redone. The Marketing and SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) team are focused on keywords and content based on ‘creative landscaping’; however, the sales team are saying that the highest converting customers are seeking “low-maintenance landscaping”.
By curating your content based on what the sales team evidently hear is converting, you are more likely to obtain leads based on trending customer needs that are more likely going to convert.
2. Continual Feedback
Feedback between sales and marketing isn’t a one-time thing; it’s an ongoing loop that can enhance communication through continual feedback on the marketing team’s efforts to align business goals and growth and enhance strategy.
Feedback between a company’s sales and marketing teams could be achieved through:
- Sales inform the marketing team which marketing channels and funnels are delivering the highest amount of qualified leads and which aren’t. Marketing teams are meant to enable the sales team to support them through the company journey.
- Bi-weekly or monthly scheduled meetings where the sales and marketing team seek to discuss progress, challenges, upcoming company activities and promotions.
- Sales team feedback used to identify potential content gaps (like FAQs or sales enablement materials like product/ category guides and brochures).
3. Involving Sales In Marketing Brainstorming Sessions
The marketing team could involve the sales team in their brainstorming sessions to ignite content ideas, strategy and campaign ideas.
(Note: A Brainstorming technique that works well is the Speedstorming Idea Generation Technique)
4. Unified Customer Personas and Avatars
A common part of marketing when it comes to the establishment of a marketing strategy is developing a customer avatar (or persona) that represents the ideal customer a company seeks to target.
Often these ‘fictional’ customer avatars have their own unique (often informal) labels used to help identify a potential customer’s itch.
On the contrary, a company’s sales department might also have adopted labels that are different from those of the marketing department. For instance, marketing might call high-value customers “Corporate Chris,” while sales refer to them as a “Kingpin.”
Sit down. Compare notes. Build avatars/personas everyone agrees on. That’s your target!
5. Aligning tools and processes
Effective communication between sales and marketing cannot be efficiently achieved without the right tools and streamlined processes.
In fact, when it comes to CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tools, over 79% of sales professionals report that they moderative or extremely improve the alignment between sales and marketing.
Stop fumbling with mismatched systems. Your CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tools should be the glue holding everything together. This could be improved through:
- Adopting a company-unified CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system,
- Utilising Marketing Automation Tools,
- Sales and marketing developing a clear lead handoff process,
- Implementing collaboration platforms,
- Aligning reporting metrics,
- Or monthly company emails outlining the marketing content and strategy being implemented in the near future.
By aligning tools and processes, the marketing and sales team can work together to eliminate inefficiencies, improve collaboration, and create a seamless experience.
6. Dominate LinkedIn
LinkedIn can be an undervalued tool when it comes to spreading brand and product awareness.
Particularly when operating in the B2B (Business to Business), LinkedIn isn’t only a tool; it’s a powerhouse for business-oriented connection and communication.
In fact, according to LinkedIn, roughly 80% of active LinkedIn members are in a decision-making position.
Sales can get direct access by connecting to the target audience, who they are most likely going to be negotiating with, which is why LinkedIn is a great channel for driving high-quality leads.
Sales are then able to either repost, like, or comment on company feeds, which can then be directly shown to the audience, which is likely to take a purchasing action.
Final word
Sales and marketing aren’t rivals—they’re allies with a shared goal: to drive growth.
When these teams work in sync, businesses see higher efficiency, better customer experiences, and stronger results.
The secret sauce? Clear communication, aligned tools, and a culture of collaboration.
So, what are you waiting for? Break down barriers, align your sales and marketing team, and unlock the full potential of your business.
The market is yours for the taking.