{SMM Article} The No. 1 Thing Leadership Can Do to Align Marketing and Sales



In order to learn how to align marketing and sales teams, we must understand how devastating a gap between these departments can be for an organization overall.

Sales and marketing are both vital to a B2B organization. Both departments play a role in connecting with, engaging and landing buyers.

Despite the gap, these two departments share many of the same concerns and end goals. Sales and marketing both work to:

  • Engage a buyer.
  • Deliver the organization’s solution to the buyer.
  • Meet organizational goals.
  • Help buyers reach their goals.

Yet, in the face of all these shared goals, 60 to 70 percent of content that marketing creates goes unused by sales, according to the Content Marketing Institute. And salespeople spend an average of two days a week – upwards of 40 percent of their time – creating their own content (CMO Council). B2B companies who struggle to align sales and marketing teams around the right processes have lost upwards of 10 percent or more of revenue per year (IDC).

How can organizations align their sales and marketing teams? How can they be different than most?

Sales and marketing leadership can align their teams by example: Through collaboration. Even within an organization, it is easy to experience department divides. The sales team is us, the marketing team is them and vice a versa. While competition is not a bad thing even within an organization, leadership should work to keep sales and marketing from competing with one another, and rather encourage their collaborating and working together.

Communication Is Key

The first step leadership can take? Talking to one another regularly…

Read the full article at Sales and Marketing Management. 

 

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