Why Sales and Marketing Alignment Matters More Than Ever

Predicting buyer behavior requires a keen understanding of exactly what they’re looking for, from a personalized sales experience to an efficient closing process.

But when sales and marketing departments operate separately, the result is inconsistent messaging, dropped leads, and reduced revenue. In fact, a LinkedIn study found that 87% of leaders in both areas believe that sales and marketing alignment is critical to business growth.

Many business leaders are now focusing on how to improve sales and marketing alignment to potential buyers as they move through the sales funnel. That requires shared KPIs, cross-functional collaboration, and regular check-in calls. Here’s a 101 guide on how to align sales and marketing to make sure your teams aren’t blocking each others’ efforts.

What is Sales and Marketing Alignment?

Sales and marketing alignment refers to close cross-channel collaboration that lets both teams execute a unified strategy. While sales and marketing teams both dedicate their resources to building relationships with buyers, they often measure success differently.

For example, the marketing team may sacrifice the quality of leads to increase quantity. Reaching more potential buyers could be the main objective. But this adversely affects sales reps, since they have to filter out the lower-quality leads. Alignment between teams ensures they have common objectives, including consistent messaging, high-quality lead generation, and increased revenue.

Here are some strategies and practices to standardize for aligned teams:

• Shared goals and key performance indicators (KPIs): Sales and marketing teams should work toward the same objectives, like revenue targets and qualified lead volume.

• Collaborative buyer profiles: Sales and marketing teams should collaborate to determine their ideal customers and how to target them.

• Message and content alignment: Both teams should ensure their message is consistent across all materials, from advertising materials to initial sales calls and closing.

• Clear rules for lead stages and handoffs: Sales and marketing should agree on when marketing departments hand leads over to the sales team.

• Established feedback loops to improve performance: Constant, clear information exchange lets both teams refine their strategy and execution.

• Shared tools and platforms: Both teams should share sales and marketing tools to ensure that everyone has access to the same information and resources. Without integration, it’s easy for data to get lost or strategies to become disconnected.

Aligned vs. Misaligned Teams

Here are some of the significant advantages of aligned teams and how they contrast with misaligned teams:

• Lead time response: Aligned teams have clear rules for handing off a lead, reducing the time it takes to move a potential buyer from marketing. Misaligned teams without clear protocols might fail to relay key details or miss a crucial window of opportunity.

• Sales cycles: With aligned teams, leads are ready for the sales team when they arrive. The increased lead quality reduces the average sales lifecycle.

• Conversion: Companies with sales and marketing team alignment are more effective at closing deals because the information flow prevents delays.

• Pipeline visibility: Unaligned sales and marketing teams have limited visibility into other parts of the pipeline, but aligned teams always have visibility into the entire pipeline.

Aligned teams respond faster to inquiries, shorten sales cycles, and convert at a higher rate. These improved efficiencies make a powerful argument for team alignment.

What is Smarketing?

“Smarketing” — short for “sales and marketing”— is a process for integrating sales and marketing teams into one effective unit. The term represents an organizational culture shift away from siloed departments in favor of cross-channel collaboration.

Here’s what defines the smarketing model:

• Marketing focuses on lead generation that fits the sales team's criteria

• Sales provides feedback on the lead quality

• Both teams work together, sharing metrics and tools to turn leads into customers

Smarketing isn’t a gimmick — it’s a cultural shift that aligns sales and marketing departments via regularly communication about what’s working and what isn’t.

Importance of Sales and Marketing Alignment

When sales and marketing operate in silos, it leads to inefficiency, conflicting messaging, and missed conversion opportunities. Alignment unifies the objectives of the sales and marketing teams and reinforces the feeling of responsibility for revenue and the pipeline.

Aligned teams improve performance by agreeing on objectives, such as what constitutes qualified leads, how to generate leads, and when marketing hands off a lead to sales. From a customer standpoint, the experience is smoother because they see consistent messaging from both teams. Plus, alignment leads to better lead preparation, meaning the sales team spends less time nurturing the buyer and more time closing deals.

How Alignment Benefits Sales

Aligning has numerous advantages for the sales reps, including:

• Fewer cold leads: Both teams set the rules for qualified leads, so marketing sends the sales reps consistent, high-quality leads.

• Faster deal velocity: Sales uses the same tools as marketing, which eliminates time spent sending information back and forth or confirming details about leads.

• Greater visibility: Sales can see the entire pipeline, making it easier to forecast outcomes.

• Better content: Sales has access to relevant assets tailored to each stage of the buyer journey.

• Stronger collaboration: Sales can influence how marketers generate qualified leads, which benefits them when marketing hands them off.

How Alignment Benefits Marketing

There are also many benefits to the marketing team:

• Real performance feedback: Marketers can use sales input to improve the quality of their campaigns.

• Higher ROI: More lead conversions mean a greater return on investment.

• Tighter targeting: If sales and marketing collaborate on buyer persona guides, marketing can tailor their outreach more effectively.

• Content optimization: Marketing uses honest sales feedback — which materials worked and which didn’t — leading to better content.

How to Foster Sales and Marketing Team Alignment

For Smarketing to work, both teams must buy into it. Here are some key factors for aligning marketing and sales processes:

1. Establish Shared Goals

Unaligned teams focus on different success metrics, like market-qualified leads (MLQ) on one side of the pipeline and closed deals on the other. To align your teams, set joint KPIs, like revenue targets, lead-to-opportunity rates, and sale-cycle length. Create dashboards that help team members visualize their shared progress.

2. Collaborate on Buyer Personas and Lead Requirements

Misunderstanding buyer personas results in the marketing team targeting low-quality leads or the sales team struggling to close deals. Sales and marketing teams should create buyer personas together, reviewing information and feedback to modify personas as needed.

3. Define Roles and Align Responsibilities Across the Funnel

In the absence of clear process, leads often stall during handoff. To fix this, sales and marketing must agree on the criteria for a developed lead and how the teams should transfer it. This clarification solidifies ownership of the lead and limits time wasted when sharing information.

4. Facilitate Ongoing Communication Through Regular Check-Ins

Alignment relies on cross-channel collaboration and communication. Teams can’t work together if they don’t communicate. Formalize communication with regular meetings and shared agendas.

Problems Sales and Marketing Alignment Can Solve

Aligning marketing, sales, and operations teams ensures that leads meet all teams’ standards, improving overall lead quality.

Low Lead Quality

Unqualified leads waste the sales team’s time and adversely impact revenue, which is a common pain point with misaligned teams. Defining a standard for qualified leads means that when a sales rep receives a lead, they already know it's viable.

Missed Revenue Targets

Having different KPIs for each phase of the sales funnel results in missed handoffs and fumbled opportunities. Shared KPIs ensure the teams work toward the same goals, like increased revenue or greater market share.

Disconnected Customer Experiences

Team misalignment results in mixed messages to customers, eroding their confidence. Aligned teams have a unified message that resonates through all levels of the sales funnel.

Wasted Resources and Budgets

Misaligned teams frequently underperform because there’s no coordinated plan linking content to buy behavior or sales needs. The result is that marketing campaigns underperform and sales content goes to waste.

Achieve Alignment and Accelerate Growth with Rox

The importance of sales and marketing alignment is proven by measurable results: increased conversions, shorter sales cycles, and improved responses to inquiries. When sales and marketing are aligned, it’s an engine for growth.

Rox helps companies build aligned teams by providing full visibility to sales and marketing in the pipeline. Our AI-powered agents handle manual tasks and surface insights so teams can spend more time focusing on high-quality leads and executing strategies that will improve performance.

If you’re ready to close the gap between sales and marketing, Rox can help you reap the benefits of sales and marketing alignment. Watch the demo to see just how Rox can transform your operations.