Imagine what would happen if you suddenly received more leads from marketing. And, what if a higher percentage of those leads were of the eager-to-talk, ready-to-buy variety?
You don’t have to ponder long. A survey conducted by LinkedIn and Join The Dots makes it clear: sales and marketing alignment is good business. For sales pros, that means boosting performance by converting better targeted, sales-ready leads who are genuinely interested in your offering.
Why Alignment Makes Sense for B2B Companies
Today’s buyers expect a seamless experience. If that’s not reason enough to align, there’s also the revenue factor: 58% of salespeople and marketers say collaboration improves customer retention, and another 54% say it boosts financial performance.
For sales pros, that means more contract renewals, cross-selling, and up-selling opportunities. It also increases the odds that our existing customers will act as a referral.
Our guide, Driving Intelligent Customer Experiences, dives into the many ways a collaborative mindset and cohesive approach benefits marketers and sellers alike.
How Greater Alignment Improves the Selling Process
Working collaboratively, sales and marketing pros can develop a unifying strategy and common goals. That means creating a shared framework to identify ideal customer types, pinpoint key messages, and determine a handoff strategy that makes sense from the customer’s standpoint.
Among teams that work together in this manner, 67% report having a clearer understanding of the customer. Sales and marketing stay the path by setting recurring meetings, coordinating planning efforts, and maintaining consensus on objectives and measurement.
Benefits Sales and Marketing Alignment Brings to Salespeople
What happens when sales and marketing have a unified view of the customer? For sales, that means less time is wasted on leads that aren’t ready to talk to sales or aren’t a good fit in general.
Without alignment, marketing is less equipped to tell what constitutes a quality lead. And as you know, it’s hard to recover from an awkward handoff. If the lead isn’t quite ready, or the expectations are unclear, we can easily hamper our chances to make a future sale.
Collaboration with marketing enables you to spend more time helping existing customers and nurturing top prospects. In fact, 58% of survey respondents who work on aligned teams report improved efficiency, with 52% experiencing greater productivity.
Learn all the ways sales and marketing collaboration can enhance your pipeline with our new guide, Driving Intelligent Customer Experiences.
Topics: Sales and marketing alignment
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