3 Tips for Aligning Marketing and Sales in B2B SaaS

Marketing and sales are both front-end teams whose primary goal is to generate income.

However, while their specific roles are quite distinct, there is usually a gap between these two departments.

Nevertheless, in order to optimize your lead generation and sales acquisition, it's crucial to create a close alignment between the sales and marketing teams.

Let's discover the three tips for aligning marketing and sales teams for a successful collaboration.

Collaborating for Success: 3 Tips for Aligning Marketing and Sales in B2B SaaS

1. Define what success looks like for both marketing and sales
2. Align your goals and strategies to support both teams’ efforts
3. Communicate regularly and effectively to ensure everyone is on the same page

1. Define what success looks like for both marketing and sales

 A marketing team must establish and implement a strategy quickly to inspire confidence, extend your budget, grow your marketing investments, and ultimately, the business's success.

To reach the desired outcome, first, you'll need to define what success looks like for both marketing and sales teams. Surprisingly, I have noticed that companies of all sizes have an issue articulating what success would look like for marketing and sales departments and the company overall.

What gets in the way of defining what success looks like?

The primary obstacle in defining success is that typically marketing teams blame the sales team and the sales team blames the marketing. As a result, companies get an evident misalignment between how marketing and sales teams define success.

In today’s B2B SaaS industry, how your company will define and measure success for the marketing team is directly tied to how the marketing team delivers leads to the sales team that convert into new customers. This will ultimately translate into increased revenue for the company.

 However, here’s where the disconnect between the two teams exists – both teams have a different perception of leads.

Sales perception of leads

In the mind of most salespeople, the only excellent leads are those that are sales-ready. They prefer leads that are ready to buy what they're offering immediately.

Your marketing team may provide them with leads from website inquiries, social media campaigns, a webinar, or a trade show. Either way, sales' immediate reaction is only to want those leads that show a clear intent to "I want to speak with sales." Even then, they might get irritated if the lead wants to talk about something other than buying.

Marketing intention for leads

On the other hand, the marketing department approaches leads quite differently. The marketing team's responsibility is to deliver the sales team the opportunity to interact with leads on different buyer journey stages. How do you define what success will look like?

Now that you know why it's challenging to define what success looks like, you're probably wondering how to define it. To bridge the gap between the two teams and define success, you must first enlist sales leadership as joint partners in defining and achieving success.

Another thing you should do to define goals is to develop a joint pipeline both marketing and sales team will follow. Kudoz is a Salesforce app solution that helps you have an accurate picture of your sales and marketing pipeline performance.

2. Align your goals and strategies to support both teams’ efforts

Once you've defined what success looks like for your marketing and sales departments, it's time to align your goals and strategies to support both teams' efforts. 

Different teams tend to efficiently operate in line with the goals that are most important to them. 

As we've already discussed, the primary distinction between marketing and sales is that marketing seeks to collect data and develop long-term lead generation strategies. In contrast, sales teams turn marketing prospects into paying clients.

To get these teams to collaborate for success, you'll first need to establish some shared goals.

Collaboration on a lead-generating plan is a great starting point place to start. Then, get your marketing and sales teams to work together to identify the best techniques for attracting relevant buyers and securing appointments.

It's best to sit close to your sales team and discuss campaigns, landing pages, and other marketing materials with them. 

Regularly talking to your sales team will also give you a better understanding of what potential clients may be experiencing that you can solve with marketing efforts.

By standing by and supporting both teams, everyone will stand together and strive to succeed in what they do.

Another way to motivate employees to work together is to properly give marketing credit it deserves.

More often than not, B2B companies underestimate the marketing team's efforts. With Kudoz, you can now allow your marketing team to never have an unknown lead source gain. Kudoz is a Salesforce reporting for marketers that gives you the ability to never have an unknown lead source by quickly resolving issues in clicks.

3. Communicate regularly and effectively to ensure everyone is on the same page

Collaborating for success doesn't end by aligning your marketing and sales teams' goals and objectives.

To maintain this situation, you should regularly and effectively communicate with both teams to ensure everyone is on the same page.

For example, sales and marketing communication doesn't have to end when marketing imports the list for a tradeshow event. Instead, marketers can follow up with the sales team and use any insights to prioritize marketing efforts to prospects that are more likely to purchase. 

Be prepared that things will go wrong from time to time – that's more or less a given. 

However, it is sometimes due to a lack of communication rather than your team's incompetence. Your staff may not always understand what you're thinking.

Here are a few things you can do to make sure that everyone is on the same page:

Discuss your ideas with team members

Things can happen quite synergistically when your team is on the same page. It's easy to believe that everyone understands what's going on, what they need to accomplish, and, ultimately, what they're working for.

In the end, your peers are not mind readers. 

They have no idea what you or the other team are thinking. It's your role as a leader to look forward and think about the big picture, but it's dangerous to make assumptions about whether or not your team members are thinking along the same lines.

Discuss your ideas with your team members. Collect their input. Things should be repeated, especially significant ones. People tend to forget what they need to accomplish, especially when things are hectic at the office. 

When your marketing and sales team achieve significant mutual goals, you know you're communicating effectively.

Notice the strengths of your employees

Being a leader entails more than just delegating. Although it is your responsibility to coordinate your employees' work, you should not abuse your position.

If you want to motivate your marketing and sales team to work together, don't just tell them that you're going to assign them a project: explain why.

Tell them that you believe they have specific skills and would be a good fit to work together on a project.

Tell them why you think they will do a fantastic job of seeing it through from beginning to end and why you believe they are more than capable of managing it.

Don’t take for granted that your marketing and sales teams are aligned

Last but not least, you should never take for granted that your marketing and sales teams are aligned.

Be prepared to repeat yourself, even if it appears to be unnecessary.

As a leader, you're obliged to consider potential scenarios and alternatives. Remember, your team members aren't always planning ahead of time.

Bringing it all Together

Collaboration between the marketing and sales teams can work wonders in your company's bottom line. And now that you know what it takes to get the two teams to work together towards the mutual objective, it's time to act upon this information and implement this strategy in your business.

Kudoz, a B2b marketing reporting app that seamlessly integrates with Salesforce, can help your teams collaborate more efficiently. Beyond having faster month-end reporting for all to digest, the intangible benefits are better forecasting, budgeting, and, most importantly, personalizing the customer experience.

Click the Request Invite button on the Kudoz website to get early access a Guided Trial Experience.