B2B Sales and Marketing Alignment

B2B sales and marketing alignment is an ongoing challenge that organizations face. While it is a challenging task, it must not be skipped as disconnected sales and marketing teams have been proven to impact lead generation efforts and overall business success. In fact, around 87% of sales and marketing leaders say collaboration between sales and marketing enables critical business growth. Below are key strategies for B2B sales and marketing alignment.

Align on the Lead Funnel

All organizations have a different definition of what the lead funnel looks like. Some companies have many stages while others have a few. Whatever the lead funnel looks like for your organization, ensure there is sales and marketing alignment. It is also critical for sales and marketing teams to align on the definitions of each of the lead stages that make up the funnel. For example, if a lead is at the Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) stage of the lead funnel, that should mean the same thing to sales and marketing. There should also be clear definitions of how the leads move through the funnel. What does it take for a lead to move from a Known lead to an MQL? That leads us to our next section of lead scoring.

Strengthen your team synergy for bottom-line impact. Download our free Sales and Marketing Alignment Playbook for executive-level strategies to achieve business objectives!

Implement Lead Scoring

Lead scoring is an effective process to ensure quality leads get passed from marketing to sales. 42% of sales professionals said they need higher quality leads from marketing teams. This process helps define qualified leads and put together an agreed-upon process. Organizations that use B2B lead scoring see a 77% increase in lead generation ROI compared to companies that do not. It is a tried-and-true tactic that many fail to use and often clears up miscommunications between sales and marketing.

Set up lead scoring using scores sales and marketing agree upon. Always base the lead scoring on demographic and behavioral scores. Get input from sales on common attributes that are useful for their research and conversations they have with leads. Ask sales leaders to identify key lead fields and get their level of importance in the scoring process. Are they critical to sales? Are they a field that could be a negative lead scoring attribute? For example, if a lead is part of an organization that is a competitor, it would make sense to deduct points from the lead’s score so that they do not progress down the funnel.

Once the demographic and behavioral-based scores are outlined, the lead scoring model is almost finalized. Establish a threshold where leads are considered MQLs or Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs). For example, if the lead scores 50 points, they are an MQL and once they get to 120 points, they are an SQL ready to get passed to sales. Ensure sales and marketing agree with the lead score threshold values before moving forward and implementing the lead scoring into your marketing automation solution.

Implement Regular Touchpoints

Unifying sales and marketing can be as simple as ensuring that everyone is speaking the same language and sharing feedback on recent activities, all of which can be accomplished with regular touchpoints between the teams. For example, sharing updates and feedback on the quality of recent leads or existing processes to ensure continuous refinement. This becomes even more crucial as time goes by and new members join the team.

As marketing receives feedback from sales on sales conversations, marketing can alter their campaigns or adjust lead scoring. These changes can boost lead generation efforts and elevate lead quality. Maybe certain messaging points resonated with the lead. Marketing can lean into those in the next campaign. Maybe certain pieces of content impacted the leads more than others. Marketing can focus on creating similar content. Communication like this between sales and marketing generates 36% higher customer retention and a 38% higher sales win rate.