If you want your B2B business to grow, to communicate more clearly and to truly delight your customers, your sales and marketing teams need to be aligned.  Experts have been preaching this for years, but many organizations have yet to establish a clear strategy to make it happen. 

Create A Plan

“According to data from the SiriusDecisions Command Center, high-growth organizations are 60 percent more likely to have a central planning process with strong alignment across marketing, sales and product stakeholders.” – SiriusDecisions

As with anything in business, accomplishing a task is much easier when you have a plan.   Having a centralized planning process that merges the strategies and tactics of sales and marketing into one comprehensive effort will be far more effective than rogue sales and marketing campaigns.

Know Your Customer

“The new reality is that sales and marketing are continuously and increasingly integrated. Marketing needs to know more about sales, sales needs to know more about marketing, and we all need to know more about our customers.” – Salesforce

When developing your sales and marketing strategy, it should be done  with your customer in mind.  Both teams should play a role in developing your buyer personas.  Ensuring that your company has an accurate representation of your ideal customer will aide in developing more targeted marketing campaigns and help establish what represents a truly qualified lead.

Be Consistent

“Sales and marketing teams have interactions with customers at different points of the customer journey. This makes it imperative that there’s consistency in content, message, tone of voice, experience, from the top of the funnel right through to the person becoming a customer.” – CMO

Ensuring that your sales and marketing teams are communicating a consistent message is vital to developing brand awareness and trust.  Communication is key to maintain this consistency.  Marketers should be engaged in the sales process from beginning to end as to better understand customer needs as well as the sales process.

Share Knowledge

“In order to support Sales successfully, it is very important to share processes, resources, and best practices from the start.” – HubSpot

This is the most important step in aligning sales and marketing.  Open communication, regular meetings and a willingness to share materials and experiences are what will bring the two sides together.  The simple act of meeting on a regular basis can create camaraderie and encourage collaboration.   Both necessary in creating a unified team.