Despite having connected tasks, sales and Marketing teams are often misaligned. Organizations attribute this to the silo effect, a business phenomenon characterized by the lack of communication and cross-departmental support among teams. Teams work only on their own goals, often ignoring the needs of others, and information (and customers) get lost in the middle.

Based on the 2014 Callidus Software in the U.S., 84% of the sales and marketing team are misaligned, affecting the communication and efficiency of their business.

But when these two collaborate, it creates a great impact on the business’ growth.

According a 2015 study done by CSO insights, 89.1% of companies that have aligned sales and marketing reported measurable increases that converted to opportunities.  

Hubspot even coined the term “SMarketing”, a term that refers to an integrated sales and marketing strategy, which was just an idea then but now has become the engine that propels businesses forward.

Here are some of the game-changing reasons why having sales and marketing effectively work together toward a common goal in your business should be top priority.

Gain Revenue
Getting your Sales and Marketing on the same page generates more income compared to those businesses with disjointed teams.

According to research by Aberdeen Group, sales and marketing alignment helps businesses achieve an average 32% annual revenue growth compared to an average 7% decline for less well-aligned competitors.

This happens because when the two departments collaborate, the sales team uses content that the marketing team has already created for them to attract, engage and convert leads rather than sales wasting time and resources doing their own research, missing out on potential sales opportunities in the process.

Have a shared understanding of Buyer Personas
It is vital for businesses that their buyer personas are developed and understood by their sales and marketing together. Members of both teams can determine which individuals and organizations make the best prospects and clients.

Alignment in this task is critical because their unified buyer personas help both teams employ a more coordinated approach and serves as a roadmap for all content creation and promotional materials created by marketing. Eventually, this leads to prospect engagement and then customers.

When sales and marketing fail to do this and target different buyer personas, valuable leads are lost.  

Set a common goal for growth
Generally, sales and marketing have the same goal and that is, to increase revenue. Yet they don’t always seem to work together to achieve that end. Marketing is focused on creating content to attract clients and on identifying new leads. Sales is focused on converting leads to clients.

According to the 2015 Callidus Software Survey, 63% of the survey participants don’t fully share data between sales and marketing.

What these teams should really do is synchronize and unify their strategies and develop initiatives that are complementary. Marketing should present their recommendations to sales on how they can help the latter achieve their sales objectives; sales, on the other hand, could help marketing better understand what they see as qualified leads so that marketing can develop better tactics that could help sales convert these leads to Clients.

Get better at closing deals
According to a joint research by Marketo and Reachforce, since sales and marketing are misaligned, half of sales’ time is wasted because they ignore as much as 80% of leads coming from marketing and they do their own prospecting. When they are in sync, however, businesses get 67% better at closing deals.

When buyers gain more information as a result of research and become more knowledgeable, it’s important that sales are empowered with the right information. Marketers have to prepare the sales team with the necessary information and content to continue to add value to leads.

When these teams are on the same page, the buyer’s journey becomes smooth and successful.

"Aligning your sales and marketing team results
in pinnacles of success and performance."

Bridge the gap
Statistics don’t lie and the reasons above clearly show how aligning your sales and marketing team results in pinnacles of success and performance.

It’s time to break down the walls between the two teams. Doing so will reap great benefits for your business including increasing revenue, reducing inefficiencies and wasteful spending. This also helps boost the morale of your teams, motivating them to perform more efficiently and subsequently generating better business outcomes for your company.

Here at EMAPTA, we help businesses build a great offshore “SMarketing” team and employ talented, competent and highly-skilled individuals who can work efficiently with their own teams and other departments as well.

If you like to know how we can help you build your teams, just click the button below and talk to us.