In order for any business to run smoothly, it’s essential that everyone works together to achieve clearly defined goals. This can be easier said than done sometimes as we’re sure you would agree. While sales and marketing teams often work closely together, it’s not uncommon for sales team to  advise that the marketing department aren’t generating enough quality leads while the marketing team feel that sales aren’t converting leads. Sound familiar?

Why you should align your sales and marketing activity?

Companies with a strong sales and marketing alignment get 20% annual revenue growth. By better aligning your sales and marketing teams, you can open the communication channels and set measurable goals that both teams can work towards.  These goals should be made together and re-evaluated on a regular basis to identify any opportunities for improvement and development across both teams. By optimising these processes, you can support lead generation and covnersion - boosting business performance.

Promote and support communication

Often problems can boil down to a communication issue. The first step therefore is to promote constant and open communication between your sales and marketing teams. By opening up the channels of communication, the marketing team will gain a better understanding of what constitutes a quality lead, and the sales team will be able to access support from marketing to close deals.

Organise regular meetings between your sales and marketing teams to ensure that the lines of communication remain open, everyone stays on track and helping build positive relationships between the two departments.

Set up a service level agreement (SLA)

You may already have external SLA’s with your providers defining what you can expect from your suppliers as well as what they expect from you. A sales-marketing SLA will help both teams understand what they need to do to meet their joint goals and overall business objectives.

Your SLA should outline:

• How many leads a sale rep requires on a weekly or monthly basis
• The quality of leads required
• The speed and depth of lead follow-up
• When leads should be passed to sales

Share information

In order to enhance the relationship between sales and marketing, important information should be shared back and forth. Encourage your marketing department to send any campaign information or updated product/service offerings to the sales team so that they can refer back to this information when contacting leads - and so they’re aware of the content their leads have already seen and engaged with.

If your business isn’t running as smoothly as it could be, we can help. Our specialist inbound marketers and HubSpot experts can refine your lead generation process, better aligning your sales and marketing activity to support your lead, sales and business goals.

Get in touch to find out more - or download our lead generation guide below to start boosting your performance online.