Breaking Down Silos: Achieving Sales-Marketing Alignment in B2B SaaS

"Salespeople are often solely motivated by their commissions. To get something from them, we always must pay for it”, is how marketers sometimes think about the sales team.

In contrast, many sales teams view marketing leads as a waste of time and effort due to insufficient qualification and missing buying intent.

The topic of sales and marketing alignment is currently a burning issue.

According to a LinkedIn study, 90% of sales and marketing professionals acknowledge misalignment in strategy, processes, content, and culture. 

This misalignment becomes apparent in numerous discussions, a culture of blame, extended sales cycles, and low funnel conversion rates.

When both teams are not aligned, it results in significant financial losses.

As the initial marketing hire at xChange, I had the privilege of sharing a room with the first sales hire and the CEO. Maintaining this level of alignment can be challenging as startups expand. 

Consequently, I'm sharing valuable lessons from my seven years in B2B marketing leadership positions, spanning from my role as the first marketing hire at xChange to my current position as a marketing director at Docplanner.

The Primary Causes of Friction Between Sales and Marketing in B2B SaaS

In my view, the primary sources of tension between sales and marketing arise from cultural disparities, competition for shared budgets, and misaligned incentives:

Culture

Due to the nature of their work, both teams attract different personality types. 

Marketers often collaborate with cross-functional teams (e.g., designers, analysts, content creators) to execute marketing campaigns. 

In contrast, salespeople tend to work more independently when interacting with prospects.

The sales team engages directly with customers, building relationships and addressing concerns, while marketers mainly rely on indirect customer interaction, such as data analysis and surveys. 

The optimal approach lies in the middle:

• Sales reps should avoid drawing hasty conclusions from a single poor call and instead prioritize data analysis.
• Marketers should enhance their ability to connect anecdotal evidence with KPI dashboards.
• Ideally, both parties should bring these observations to weekly marketing-sales meetings to adjust messaging, campaigns, and lead routing.

Budget

Organizations typically allocate a single budget for acquiring new customers, shared by both marketing and sales. 

Naturally, a competition ensues for a larger share of this budget. Both teams are measured against the same funnel metrics. 

• Revenue through sales is usually easier to forecast, making it more attractive for CEOs when making investment decisions.
• Marketing, on the other hand, requires a significant upfront investment, as exemplified by SEO. Success in SEO demands a substantial initial effort, including publishing articles and waiting for ranking. It takes time to see tangible results, especially when compared to sales.

Incentives

A common theme is that sales reps and leaders are incentivized based on revenue, while marketers are incentivized based on MQLs. 

Sales reps generally receive a higher commission share compared to marketers, if marketers even receive a commission at all. 

This disparity can lead to frustration on both sides. 

Marketers' salaries remain flat regardless of performance, while sales teams' salaries are more variable. 

To address this, smart CEOs incentivize their marketing teams on pipeline creation. 

Instead of merely sending MQLs and disregarding the outcome, pipeline represents scheduled or conducted product demos. 

Establishing clear definitions of a quality lead and successful demos through service level agreements is crucial for transparency.

The Importance of a Service Level Agreement (SLA) and Its Components

Having an SLA in place is essential for a successful sales and marketing organization. 

Written agreements on responsibilities and deliverables across various funnel stages should be co-created by marketing and sales teams. 

If you haven't already, allocate time after your annual planning process to agree on definitions, ownership of leads, expected actions, and measurement of success. 

➡️ Key points that SLAs between sales and marketing should include:

• Lead quantity: The number of leads sent to the sales team and how it changes over time combined with planned funnel CVRs.
• Lead quality: Specify the type of leads, such as eBook downloads, demo form requests, and passive leads.
• Ideal customer profile (ICP): Define what a lead is, how you show buying intent, regions, specializations, and job functions.
• Handover: Establish lead notification and assignment methods, including region, type, or round-robin.
• Collaboration: Outline communication channels for quality and quantity feedback and sharing campaign insights.

• Follow-up cadence: Set expectations for response times, email and call frequency, and lead pursuit duration.
• Contact results: Define how marketing tracks lead status and lost reasons and what actions follow certain lost reasons.
• Lead routing: Specify lead allocation methods, maximum leads per rep, and team assignments.
• MQL > Demo conversion: Establish conversion rate commitments for SDRs and strategies to increase it.
• What happens after the demo: Ensure clarity on post-demo interactions between AEs and SDRs across follow-up cadence, time to close, lost reasons and feedback loop.

To execute the SLA effectively, align on suitable dashboards for tracking metrics and hold weekly sales-marketing meetings to discuss numbers, focus on initiatives, and address challenges or findings. 

Also, consider inviting a representative from RevOps to ensure data integrity and involve AEs in monthly meetings for improved funnel conversion rates. 

Maintain a shared meeting document for notes and transparency, but don't wait for meetings to resolve issues promptly.

Alignment hinges on personal contributions

Building alignment between sales and marketing requires fostering unity and a shared purpose. 

It's not just the heads of sales and marketing; consider establishing informal interactions like coffee chats, mini-internships, or shared Slack channels to foster camaraderie and clarify roles. 

Regular team events reduce a culture of blame. 

When teams lack alignment, issues often play out in public, with managers or team leads copied in emails. In contrast, aligned teams address their issues privately. 

The most important lesson for exceptional sales and marketing alignment is to first focus on self-improvement before criticizing others.

As always in life, it always starts with you. 

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Thanks for reading!

You might believe I excel in sales-marketing alignment, but I acknowledge there's still so much to learn for me. My counterparts on the sales side can confirm this. 

Please share your thoughts on the article and your ideas for enhancing sales and marketing alignment in the comments.