Three Levels of Sales and Marketing Alignment Maturity

During the marketing automation era, Marketing and Sales alignment resembled a “baton pass” in a relay race. Marketing owned the top of the funnel, generating leads – which they would then pass to Sales who, in turn, owned the deal close and post-sale growth.

This linear model worked at the time, especially for simple lead-based go-to-market strategies. But it is looking increasingly outdated in the face of an increasingly non-linear account journey.

Rather than a hand-off baton pass, in Account-Based Experience (ABX) the Marketing and Sales departments operate as a team. Players have distinctly different positions – offense and defense – but they work together to pass the ball back and forth down the field to create and win new business and drive account growth.

The number #1 account-based success factor is the ability to coordinate programs across Marketing, Sales Development, and Sales (TOPO). If you want to close more deals, your Sales and Marketing departments should operate as a team and follow an orchestrated process, rather than a hand-off baton pass. In an orchestrated Sales and Marketing environment, players have distinctly different positions — offense and defense — but they work together to pass the ball back and forth down the field to create and win new business and drive account growth. Companies attempting to move Marketing and Sales towards the orchestrated movements of a well-practiced team go through three levels of maturity. 

3 Level of Sales and Marketing Alignment Maturity

Level 1: Communication via Shared View of Accounts Sales and Marketing share data about accounts—but act independently from each other. It’s still a baton hand-off, but the departments work off the same data and metrics. 

74% of business buyers say sales’ awareness of marketing campaigns is important to win their business - Salesforce, State of the Connected Customer

Level 2: Activation via Proactive Alerts Marketing alerts Sales about key insights and nudges them to take the right actions. Marketing acts like the quarterback, calling the plays that prompt the team (or at least the SDRs) to act. Most sales reps and SDRs appreciate email or Slack alerts about account engagement. This proactively tells them where they should focus and what actions they should take, without waiting for them to log into the CRM. 

85% of B2B sales reps who receive alerts on opportunities say the alerts help them do their job better - Salesforce, State of the Connected Customer

Level 3: Orchestration via Integrated Plays True orchestration is when both departments work together as a single team, perfectly in sync, running integrated plays and coordinating everything with regular standups. Like a good football coach, create a “playbook” of integrated plays, and then have Marketing, Sales, and SDRs meet regularly to “call the plays” they want to run. We call these meetings ABX Standups.

You can download The B2B Marketing & Sales Orchestration Playbook to go deeper on orchestration and learn 20 orchestrated plays that you can utilize immediately.

Get your copy of my book, The Definitive Guide to Smarter GTM™ with Account Intelligence and ABM/ABX. You can download it here.