Blog Post
Sales and Marketing Alignment
A good relationship between Sales and Marketing is crucial for a successful and profitable business, however, its challenges are well-known. We invited Christina Maria, a marketing and sales specialist and part of our senior Performance Marketing team, to give her perspective on the topic.
Christina M Tzianou
19th of October 2022 • 5 min read
When talking with clients, generating leads is the number one priority. Due to continuous technological advancements, the changes in the buyers’ journey, the smart social marketing techniques and data driven performance, B2B marketing has evolved in ways that will allow customers to get closer to prospects, when the right strategy is in place. However, generating leads is not where the game is over. Following up with those leads and actually closing some deals, is the big bet and where marketing and sales come together.
What is one of the main challenges you face today working with large IT clients in terms of lead generation?
One thing I constantly observe is the lack of capacity from sales teams when it comes to follow up, usually at the end of our campaigns. If I had to justify this, I would mainly say that the problems start from not getting sales reps to align with Marketing in the first place, on a potential marketing initiative, the goal and expected outcome. At the end of the day, Sales and Marketing are both units of the same organization, therefore the goal should be the same, i.e. to adhere to the company’s vision and goals, and they should work closely together to achieve them. For instance, how can Marketing produce content that is king without getting Sales to have a say in it? Who knows your end customers better than your own sales team? Marketing teams do not necessarily interact with clients, thus any feedback provided by Sales can certainly be of great benefit.
What is your take on the proper definition of a lead? It’s not as easy as it seems.
As I frequently talk with our marketers’ clients, I’ve noticed that even the term 'lead’ is not properly defined between Sales and Marketing, so we end up having to use different language instead of using the same describing the same thing. From lead, to MQL, SQL and opportunity, there are many definitions that pop up, depending on who you ask. In addition, each marketing team has its own special terminology. I have found myself on several occasions in the position of having to explain how a lead is defined even at the last call we have with a client, when Sales show up and when we are supposed to discuss the overall campaign. So, getting things right from the very beginning is a must!
Expectations vs Reality
If you don’t want to find yourself in the very unfortunate position of having to defend your marketing efforts vs the results, make sure you set realistic expectations from the very outset. But what are real expectations in marketing? 20 leads or 5 SQLs? Or is it the ROMI? The best way to approach this would be to start from the very end goal and work backwards in order to calculate the right budget and then take it from there. More often clients want just ‘new leads’ or ‘increased revenue’ or ‘new pipe’. If for instance, your goal is an addition 10k of revenue, this could mean five deals of 2k each. Then you need to calculate the #of SQLs from the #of MQLs generated from the overall size of pipeline, taking into account the ability of Sales to close a % of SQLs. The right budget can then be identified. When clients come to us and say: “I’ve got 5k to spend and I want 50 SQLs,” we know that this just won’t work! So, get your calculators out, be precise and stop depending on wishful thinking. Especially, when marketing fund is provided to you, be smart on what you can actually achieve, based on your capacity, resources and deadline.
Sitting down with sales reps
In order for Sales and Marketing to come closer together, sales reps should be informed about the concept behind any GTM activities, so they can find some kind of pleasure and think about how to make themselves handy to marketing. Why should anyone do more than what is required anyway? What’s in it for them? Sharing the big picture and making GTM a common effort might take sales reps out of the misery of having to just follow up on some random leads generated by marketing provided in a poor excel file. Sales and Marketing should be best buddies rather than acting like as a divorced couple who are ignorant of each other’s business. And we have seen the outcome so many times with our clients. When we have joint calls with marketing and sales or business development reps, the best discussions occur, there is such a vibe and energy all looking at achieving max results out of a common effort.
What is the art of follow up?
We are very often asked how follow ups should be handled, i.e. what to say, in what tone, is it best to call the client or try to get in touch via email, etc. We always reply that follow ups should be dealt with in accordance with the content each lead has acquired. Therefore, when a list of contacts is handed over to Sales, the sales reps should make themselves familiar with the type of the campaign and content used, so that they are on the same page when they hold a conversation with the leads. It is also important to try to ascertain some additional information about the lead, such as job title, unit and size of company, in order to know how much influence they have on the company’s business decision-making. Another tip would be to also share the leads via a CRM system, so that all information is stored and tracked for future use. It’s also advisable to not sound too much like a salesperson in the first five minutes of your contact; try to slowly get your lead interested in the content and be sure to investigate the needs and current situation before you actually start selling.