Marketing and sales alignment
How to achieve strategic alignment between marketing and sales, and make sure they execute together (without staying aligned in theory).
We are aligned in theory, but never do anything together in practice.
This is how the VP of Marketing of one of our clients described their marketing and sales alignment on the first meeting. The said reality is that a lot of B2B companies can’t get both teams aligned even on paper.
In most B2B companies I know marketing and sales are 2 siloed functions focusing on their own KPIs and targets. Nobody really cares about misalignment until the company hits revenue targets. But when the targets are missed, the blaming and fingerpointing battle starts.
In today’s newsletter we cover:
What sales want from marketing
2 levels of marketing and sales alignment
10 activities to make sure marketing and sales execute together
Marketing and sales alignment checklist
Let’s dive in.
Become a full-funnel B2B marketer who drives revenue
If you are a B2B marketer, your core KPIs are really simple: sales-qualified opportunities and revenue. Period.
To generate sales-qualified opportunities and influence revenue metrics such as ACV, deal close-rate and sales cycle length, you need to run demand generation, account-based marketing, lead nurturing, deal expansion and sales enablement campaigns.
It might be frustrating, especially, if you don’t have a prior background or experience of selling to mid-size/enterprise accounts.
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2 levels of marketing and sales alignment.
There are 2 levels of marketing and sales alignment: Strategy and Execution.
1. ALIGNMENT ON STRATEGY.
Before planning any joint program, make sure both teams are aligned on:
Target market segments or clusters
Ideal Customer Profile including account qualification and buying committee structure
Buyer journey scenarios and core activities to influence it
Segment value proposition and differentiation
Key metrics and reports, including a holistic revenue report and sales pipeline velocity
Stack ownership and tracking frequency
Account intelligence: what do you need to know about target account to create a relevant and personalized offer?
CRM definitions and statuses: pipeline stages, handover criteria, lead criteria, etc.
The last point is a real challenge for many B2B companies. Talk to your sales peers and ask them to describe leads and pipeline stages, and you’re likely to here different answers.
Here is an example of how to solve it.
1/ Set up a team meeting involving marketing, sales, client success, RevOps.
2/ Work on definitions, pipeline stages and joint activities.
Let’s talk about leads.
Definition – Lead (or sales qualified lead) - account that fits your ICP (ideal customer profile) and requested a discovery call through the website, email or social channels.
Buying intent – Declared.
List - Sales Pipeline.
Pipeline stage – Discovery call scheduled.
Account ownership - Account Executive based on territory or Tier.
Marketing activities:
- Sales enablement content hub relevant to the account's vertical or cluster
- Cluster retargeting
Sales activities:
- Discovery
- Business case creation
- Connecting and engaging with the rest of the buying committee
- Mutual actions plan
Goal: Closed Won
Drive pipeline THIS quarter with a full-funnel ABM programs.
If any of these challenges sound familiar:
You are aligned in theory with sales but don’t do anything in practice aside from receiving wish lists from sales and sharing with them your marketing plan. In reality, you work in silos and miss the revenue targets and are being pressured by your executives.
You understand that your marketing and sales playbook is broken (mqls, gated content) but despite many attempts you don’t know how to fix it
Your outbound, paid ads and organic pipeline drastically decreased while CAC increased mostly because most of your market is problem unaware and not buying.
You lack brand awareness among target accounts and sales can’t get even a reply.
You clearly see that you're already behind your revenue targets
We can help.
We'll develop a custom full-funnel ABM strategy aligned with your resources, budget and stack and execute it together to drive results THIS quarter.
2. EXECUTIONAL ALIGNMENT.
To avoid being aligned in theory, but never doing anything together in practice, develop joint playbooks.
Make sure marketing and sales sit down together and answer 6 questions:
How do we select a market segment / cluster where we are likely to get the results?
How do we prioritize which accounts to focus on opportunity development?
How do we warm up the buying committee?
How do we activate target accounts?
How do we track our progress and maintain the program?
Here are 10 activities marketing and sales can execute together to drive revenue.
10 activities to make sure marketing and sales execute together
I believe that the real marketing and sales alignment happens not on paper but when B2B marketers jump into the trenches with sales and help them generate revenue.
Let's start with 3 fundamental things.
1. Shared list of accounts that are matching ICP (ideal customer profile) including account qualification criteria.
Marketing must target the same list of accounts as sales. The list is vetted, enriched, and qualified. Forget about "wish lists" or "dead deals".
The account list should strictly fit ICP.
2. Shared account development playbook.
Usually, account development belongs to sales, but marketing can help to create awareness in target accounts and accelerate the sales cycle.
Account development playbook includes activities both marketing and sales will take to:
- Connect with the buying committee
- Get insights about the account needs and where they might be in the buying journey.
- Nurturing and activation steps
- Value proposition matching
3. Same revenue report.
It's extremely important that both teams:
Have the same KPIs
Measure their success by revenue generated and opportunities created with target accounts.
Host regular pipeline and campaign review meetings.
When a foundation is in place, here are 7 activities that can help marketing and sales accelerate sales and win more deals.
4. Marketing supports sales with the intent data showing the account engagement.
This includes:
Website and content engagement (visits, pages, time spent)
Webinars / product overview sign-ups
Social and newsletter engagement
Account penetration (new people sign up for newsletter, events, connect or engage with your company)
5. Set up regular pipeline review meetings.
Sales share with marketing the account status during
Conversations happening with the accounts
Insights about the key initiatives and where the account is in its journey
Ideas on how marketing can help.
Aside from this, both teams should go together through the current campaigns and opportunities, and discuss:
What to do to move a deal forward?
How to refine existing campaigns?
What can be improved in the existing playbook?
6. Marketing and sales set up multichannel alerts and share insights with each other.
These insights might include:
Brand and target account mentions
Key initiatives and updates from target accounts
Changes in the org structure of target accounts
Investments
7. Marketing targets accounts with relevant content according to the collected insights.
E.g. if a company hired a new CMO, and you are a marketing agency, you can target them with a guide: 90 days of a new CMO.
8. Marketing connects with peers in target accounts.
They are wearing the same shoes and quite often can supply marketing with insider information about key initiatives and decision-makers.
But what is really important is that these are people who’ll be sharing your content internally and can create awareness inside buying committee that will simplify life for your sales team.
9. Marketing retargets accounts with case studies and customer stories when the account is moved to the activation stage.
10. Marketing leverages different intent data sources, qualifies newly identified accounts, and adds them to the ABM plays.
Marketing simplifies the job for sales by adding the accounts that are already aware of the product and company.
We explain the process in this post.
Marketing and sales alignment checklist
To wrap up this newsletter, here is a marketing and sales alignment checklist you can use.
1. REALISTIC SHARED GOALS.
Don't default to acquisition of leads or net-new pipeline.
Do this instead:
☑ Evaluate historical sales velocity (deal size, sales cycle and win-rate), broken down per net-new accounts vs expansion, and per tier (SMB, mid-market vs enterprise)
☑ Evaluate the expansion potential of current accounts
☑ Analyze your biggest churned deals
☑ Analyze the complete funnel and talk to marketing, SDR, AE and CSM functions to understand where the bottlenecks are in the sales process, and what is currently being missed to win and retain highest-value deals over the long time
☑ Based on this analysis, identify the biggest opportunities to achieve high-priority business objectives
☑ Define the shared goals for all your GTM teams. E.g. increase net-new sales volume in mid-market segment by 30% and create a new program to expand at least five enterprise customers.
2. TARGET SEGMENTS & ACCOUNT CLUSTERS
☑ Export deals from the last year, segmented by the main use-case, industry and region
☑ Analyze sales velocity of the different segments
☑ Agree on the high priority segments
3. ACCOUNT QUALIFICATION & THE BUYING COMMITTEE
☑ Analyze 5 largest & 5 fastest won deals, and the 5 largest lost deals from the target segments
- Collect common firmographics, technographics and other criteria to (dis)qualify accounts that you're more likely to win and retain
- Identify people who played the role of champions, influencers, decision makers, blockers and power users
☑ Analyze these people to derive common target roles, profile keywords, responsibilities and KPIs
4. ACCOUNT PRIORITIZATION & THREE LISTS
☑ Define the criteria (related to relationship, revenue potential, brand awareness and product need evidence) to break target accounts into
- Cluster ICP: vendor unaware, product need unknown
- Future Pipeline: vendor aware, product need unknown
- Active Focus: vendor aware, product need evidence strong
We describe the process here:
☑ Define data sources and tech to evaluate these criteria
☑ For each source, assign a responsible person and frequency
5. CLUSTER PROGRAMS & PLAYBOOKS
☑ For each list, define playbooks (channels, target buyer roles and concrete sales activities, marketing activities) aligned with the buyer journey stage, to:
- Generate awareness and demand with Cluster ICP accounts
- Build relationship and validate the product need with Future Pipeline accounts
- Generate opportunities with Active Focus accounts
☑ Define clear timeline and responsibilities
6. PROGRAM TRACKING & MAINTENANCE
☑ Define KPIs and leading indicators and reporting cadence
☑ Establish regular pipeline review and account planning meetings
☑ Schedule joint retrospective and planning
Most sales & marketing teams are aligned on paper, but in reality never work together.
Use the above checklist to go from PowerPoint alignment, to real GTM and execution alignment.
This is the biggest opportunity for most B2B teams in 2024.
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Live Case Study Breaking Marketing and sales silos with a pilot ABM
In the new episode of Fullfunnel Live we share a live case study of a 2-months ABM program launch with Divash Basnet, VP Marketing and Lee Adam, Product Marketing from Cardata.
We cover:
How to get buy in from sales and stakeholders to launch a joint program
How to orchestrate a pilot program and set up the right KPIs for the ABM team
How to balance marketing and sales resources between ABM and other motions
ABM team, stack, playbooks and results of a 2-month pilot
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