When you pick up a forkful of food, incredibly complicated anatomical interactions have to take place before the bite gets to your mouth. Your brain has to send signals to your hand to keep your fingers wrapped around your fork, direct your arm upward while keeping your hand level, then aim the fork into your mouth. It’s a seemingly simple action that’s actually not simple at all.
Sales-Marketing alignment is a little like that.
Each team has to stay in sync so things run smoothly. Falling out of step could mess with the entire operation.
The difference is that Sales-Marketing alignment is far more costly than dropping a forkful of food. In fact, decreased sales productivity and wasted marketing efforts due to misalignment costs a whopping $1 trillion a year.
Nope, you didn’t read that wrong.
What contributes to this scary price tag? Marketing teams generate leads for their sales organizations, but an alarming 79% never convert to sales, partly due to a lack of nurturing. Of the leads that get passed to salespeople, 73% are never contacted.
Aligning Sales and Marketing has real impact. Organizations with good alignment not only achieve 27% faster three-year profit growth, they also close 38% more deals. Businesses with effective Sales and Marketing alignment achieved 208% higher marketing revenue than organizations with disjointed teams.
But how do you get Sales and Marketing on the same page?
It’s crucial to set mutually agreed-upon definitions for "lead" and "qualified lead," determine key metrics for each team, and maintain healthy channels of feedback, among other tasks.
This infographic from Wheelhouse Advisors offers helpful tips on how to get Sales and Marketing headed in the same direction, and details even more ways Sales-Marketing alignment benefits your business.
