How to Align Sales and Marketing

Traditionally, business leaders have seen B2B as a completely separate thing from marketing. The focus has been on the former, while the latter can often be just an afterthought. This paradigm has been shifting for quite some time, and soon, any business that follows this outdated premise will get left behind. It’s become essential to align sales and marketing, and we’re here to tell you all about it.

Sales have changed a lot in the past couple of decades, and you can expect it to keep on changing for a long time to come. Inbound marketing has paved the way for a more direct relationship between sales and marketing. When both of your teams are working towards a common goal, magic happens. Let’s talk about that.

Why You Should Align Sales and Marketing

The best reasons to align sales and marketing:

• It’s a better way to spend your time and money. Using your sales numbers and data to build content at all times will help you see, quickly, what’s working and what isn’t. When you align sales and marketing, everything works in conjunction. You won’t have to wait for a quarterly staff meeting to fix something that may have caused issues for months.
• Customers aren’t passive anymore. With every bit of information at the fingertips of potential clients, buying something has turned into an in-depth affair. Consumers are now very conscious and empowered, and knowing them can help you connect with who they are and what they want.
• Search engines act as salespeople, and it’s best to join them than to compete with them. Engines like Google and Bing are full of advertisement catering directly to those who are interested in each specific product. Why would you miss out on that?

Are you convinced but unsure of what to do to align sales and marketing? Keep reading!

Taking the Customer's Journey Into Account

In traditional models, we see sales through the following model:

• Awareness. The customer realizes the existence of a specific product or service.
• Interest. The customer is actively interested in the item.
• Desire. The customer decides he wants it.
• Purchase. The customer makes his purchase.

Things aren’t quite as simple as that anymore. Nowadays, the decision to purchase any given item is much more informed. There’s a lot of research involved, including comparisons between different brands and websites. To align sales and marketing, you should start by:

• Mapping out the journey your customers make. You can do this by directly engaging with them in any number of ways. You can find more information about customer journey maps on this Bright Vessel blog post.
• Realizing your customer may be comprised of several people. A common occurrence in B2B for more substantial investments, you may be looking at a team instead of a single person. Keep in mind that each decision may come from a group of different experts, so cater to each of them.

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