Sales and marketing alignment is a perennial challenge for businesses of all sizes. In fact, our research has found that just 37% of businesses feel sales and marketing are working well together.
We caught up with two of our Marketing Directors, Colin Stickland and Stephen Rumbelow, to understand why businesses often struggle with sales and marketing alignment—and what leaders can do to get both teams pulling together.
Misalignment usually comes down to mismatched expectations on both sides about the marketing and sales process.
“I used to work with a publisher of scientific research that had separate sales, marketing and commercial teams. And they all acted solo,” Stephen told us. “Which meant that, ultimately, marketing wasn’t aligned with the needs of the business. And sales were struggling to close deals due to a lack of marketing support.
“So, I pulled everyone together and asked, ‘Okay, what do sales need?’ And, together, we started to build and define ideal customer profiles. This helped them see what sales really needed was customer-focused content to help customers make buying decisions.”
Colin agrees. “Marketing’s role should be managing mid and top-of-funnel activities. Sales’ role is to find and close in-market leads. But they also need to work together to understand how they can support each other in carrying out those roles. And many businesses forget that.”
He recently worked with a company whose lack of communication between marketing and sales meant they were focusing all of their marketing activity on the top of the funnel and then passing low-intent ‘leads’ on to sales.
“It obviously wasn’t working,” Colin explains. “95% of customers just aren’t ready to buy. Especially if you’re trying to convert customers at the top of the funnel who don’t know you or your product yet.”
Instead, marketing should focus on targeting and nurturing both the top and the middle of the funnel, building trust with potential customers and taking them through a cohesive buying journey. “So, when the time comes, people that are ready to buy will pop out of the bottom of the funnel, ready for sales to catch them.”
So, how do you get your sales and marketing teams to work better together? First, it’s about creating total clarity and agreement on both sides about the joint marketing and sales process.
“Your teams need to clearly understand the buying journey and the differences between a marketing-qualified lead and a sales-qualified lead,” says Colin.
“That way, marketing understands what a good lead for sales really looks like and how they can nurture them through the buying journey for sales to close.”
Second, it needs to be one, fully joined-up strategy with shared targets for marketing and sales.
For example, during a previous role, Colin proved that having the same goals for sales and marketing helped them collaborate better.
“I set the goal of 30% growth for both teams,” he says. “Not a sales target or financial number. Not the number of impressions. Not a spend or budget. But something marketing and sales could collectively work towards. And it worked!”
Finally, sales and marketing should operate on a shared view of the customer and what really matters to them. That means utilising a customer-centric approach that prioritises the needs of the customer. And building a funnel based on what they want and need in order to buy.
“I worked with a Mobile TelCo startup that had quite a disjointed approach,” says Stephen. “While they had business development people that knew the technical stuff inside out, they had a really poor website that was all about the product and said nothing about the customer.”
He worked with them to create customer profiles that outlined who target customers were, the problems they faced and what they wanted from a potential solution.
From this, he developed a content strategy that aligned with the sales funnel to guide and support targets throughout the buying journey, building trust and familiarity. By the time they spoke to sales, they were already warm and receptive to having a conversation.
“It worked exceedingly well,” he says. “They exceeded their order targets by 300%, which went way off the scale, beyond what they expected they’d get.”
Don’t let marketing and sales create and follow separate strategies. Start by creating a joint strategy with joint goals—and with the ultimate goal being your revenue target.
“I recently had a Marketing 2025 plan discussion,” Colin says. “We had the sales team, sales manager, marketing director and marketing manager all in one room and talked through all the funnel stages to work out what they actually needed to look like to generate what we needed from the sales team.
“That kind of holistic approach and shared ownership of the funnel is exactly what you want. Everyone working together, sharing information and creating shared targets.”
Stephen nods, “That also means there’s no squabbling around who gets credit for what lead, or anyone making excuses.”
It’s also beneficial to set up shared reporting across sales and marketing, with clear channels of communication. That way, both teams can understand what’s working, what isn’t and what needs to improve.
“Sales should have loads of insights about customers,” says Stephen. “What they like, what they don’t like, how they’re prioritised. And it’s marketing’s job to tease that out in a structured manner.”
Ultimately, creating total alignment between your sales and marketing teams requires strong marketing leadership. As well as marketers with the skills and experience to work alongside sales to define a strategy and ensure both sides can deliver on it.
Our proven team of more than 100 Marketing Directors have decades of experience defining and delivering shared marketing-sales strategies for UK SMEs. If you’re struggling to create alignment with your marketing and sales teams, get in touch and we’ll discuss how our fractional and part-time Marketing Directors can help.