The pros and cons of aligning the sales and marketing team

This article originates from a panel discussion at the Revenue Marketing Summit in London, 2022. Job titles and companies are correct as of the time of recording.

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It's no secret that a well-aligned sales and marketing team can be the driving force behind a company's success. But how do you navigate the benefits and challenges of uniting these two powerhouse departments?

We recently gathered four marketing experts to share their insights in an engaging panel discussion:

🌟 Radmila (a.k.a. Mila) Blazheska, CMO of SecurityHQ,

🌟 Marina Pape, Head of Country Marketing UK at Mollie,

🌟 Alun Swift, Head of Revenue Operations at Ably, and

🌟 James White, Director of EMEA Partnerships at Klaviyo

In this article, we'll dive into the key takeaways from these industry leaders as they discuss:

So, grab a cup of coffee and settle in as we explore the secrets to successful sales and marketing alignment, straight from the experts themselves.

The benefits of close alignment between sales and marketing

Radmila Blazheska

There's always a little bit of friction between the two teams, but it's all about balance. I always use the marriage analogy: sales and marketing teams are like a married couple and if there's no love, you end up with a very hefty divorce bill.

To achieve true alignment, you need to merge your metrics. Obviously, marketing and sales always have different KPIs, but if both teams have one set of KPIs – let's say around company revenue – and you work towards that in your annual targets, then it's clear what both teams need to achieve.

The benefit of that alignment is company growth. If you have one set of revenue goals ahead of you, and both teams are trying to achieve that, the company will grow, teams will grow, revenue will grow, and you will grow as well.

Alun Swift

So it's about being aligned on common goals and working towards the same thing. Marina, what's your take on that?

Marina Pape

If you don't have alignment, it creates a lot of friction, which creates drag and reduces productivity. To echo what Mila said, if your sales and marketing functions are working together, you get more than just those two halves put together – you get impact and happier, more productive teams.

Alun Swift

From a sales perspective, James, what are some of the benefits for sales of having that close alignment with marketing?

James White

From what I’ve seen, having a marketing function that's able to drive leads that sales teams understand and know what to do with is the main benefit on the sales side. Incentives aside, generally, a sales team is trying to convert leads into opportunities and revenue.

The biggest breakdowns come when there's a huge number of leads, but sales teams aren’t aware that they’ve entered the funnel or where they are in the funnel.

Another common issue that I've had to deal with in the past is what seems like a good problem to have – too many leads – but unfortunately, there’s been a lack of understanding about how to reach out to them and move them down the funnel.

That creates a lot of frustration. You've got marketing saying, “We've done this great job getting you all these leads – why aren’t you converting them?”

Meanwhile, sales don’t have enough information about these leads so they feel like they’re reaching out blindly. Flipping that on its head, which is way harder than it sounds, is something everyone should be striving for.

Let's say I'm a salesperson. When I'm reaching out to a lead that's come from an event, I want to know what they've done before, why they attended, who they talked to there, their market size, and if I'm even allowed to sell to them.

That's the kind of cohesion we need. Tactically, marketing should be prepping the BDR team or the sales team with a cheat sheet or some kind of notes in the lead scoring tool.

Those little pieces are really important, and I think a lot of people forget to join the dots. Like in any marketing, context is everything, and salespeople need just as much context as the billboard ad or whatever it is you're doing at the top funnel level.

With insights from expert contributors, actionable advice/guidance, and example frameworks, our playbook has everything you need to get your marketing and sales teams truly aligned. 👇

How to create cohesion between sales and marketing teams

Marina Pape

Something that's worked really well for us to bring that cohesion was working on our attribution model. We’ve worked hard to strike a balance between last-click direct attribution and marketing showing up as an influence on certain leads coming in.

I think if you can set that up and educate your teams so everybody understands the role that marketing plays and knows that they can trust the attribution model, it's going to show up in different activities appropriately.

That goes a long way toward improving communication, showing the impact that marketing has, and creating a sense of fairness. You want to have that transparency. You also need to keep updating your attribution model as you learn more.

Radmila Blazheska

I absolutely agree with Marina. I would just add something that has worked for us in the past: training – not just training the marketing teams on what the sales process is about, but showing them the end goal and how to enable and help sales teams.

To make this happen, we run continuous training for our marketing teams, involve them in sales conferences, have them listen to sales calls and attend customer meetings, and so on.

It’s also important to train sales teams on how marketing works and make sure there’s continuous feedback. There's no point in marketing bringing leads to the sales teams if we don't actually talk to the sales teams and understand whether those leads are any good.

I don't believe in demand generation where you wait for 12 months to see the results. The results should be seen immediately. If something works, you can see it works.

And it's not just about the number of leads coming into the CRM; it's about whether those leads progress. We're not just talking about opportunities; we're talking about customers. We're talking about a post-sales process involving customer support as well as sales and marketing.

Another thing that works is having sales and marketing leaders working hand in hand and attending meetings together – not just attending regular company meetings as a check-box exercise, but also having ad hoc meetings.

Whenever you see something that isn’t right, pick up the phone or meet your sales partner to talk about why things aren’t working. You can’t bring any ego or drama or things will fall apart.

Another key thing to talk about is the hiring process. Marketing teams are not generally involved in sales teams’ hiring processes, but if you get them involved in the beginning, sales teams understand how important the marketing function is within the company.

We're not just there to make things look pretty and bring leads to the table – we're one of the key viable structures of the company.

Alun Swift

James, what's your take on getting marketing involved in the sales hiring?

James White

Well, I think one of the things that Marina and Mila both pointed out is that you can operationalize things as much as you want, but if you don't have great sales and marketing leadership, you're not going to get anything done.

So should marketing be involved in a BDR (Business Development Representative) hire? Maybe not. But should they be involved in a BDR director hire? Definitely, because that person's working in lockstep with marketing.

If they're not on the same page about the strategy, or if there's an operational problem, for example, and a BDR director comes in expecting perfect lead scoring and immaculate notes and those are not present, then you're gonna have a problem.

Alun Swift

So it's not just about having team members turn up at each other's team meetings; it's about having alignment from the top.

James White

Absolutely, and incentive agreements as well. So many sales teams’ incentive programs get built separately from marketing teams.

It’s like, “We want our sales team to do this and we're gonna pay them for that,” but then marketing doesn't often get a say in that – or maybe they do but only once they realize something's going wrong.

For example, a BDR manager might see that their team's not closing enough outbound deals, so they add a 2% incentive to every outbound closed deal, and then suddenly the attention on inbound leads drops off completely.

Meanwhile, marketing doesn't know what’s going on, and you’ve got a problem. It's important at the leadership level to agree on mutually beneficial objectives and incentives because incentives drive behavior.

Why it’s vital that marketing communicates with sales

Alun Swift

Why is there a perceived need for marketing to get sales involved more than sales are getting marketing involved?

Marina Pape

One theory that I have is that marketing carries non-FTE costs. Sales has headcount costs and incentives – it's quite clean, right? You know your cost per sale.

But marketing has the cost of events, the cost of ad spend, and that kind of thing, and has to show payback on that spend. The onus is on marketing to show evidence of how its spend influences the sales pipeline. Sales doesn't have to do that.

Alun Swift

Yeah, I completely agree. Marketing is not going to generate revenue on its own. Sales can, in theory, generate revenue on their own, so the balance of power might sit more with sales, unfortunately. I think the challenge is for sales to see how much marketing can benefit them.

Marina Pape

And that can be an awkward question for marketing, right? I remember we had an event and some of the sales team were there, and I just couldn't understand why they weren't excited – I was finding it quite frustrating.

I asked what was going on and it turned out that the sales team was under a lot of pressure and needed to focus on warmer leads, but their sense was that these leads were going to be a bit cold. That was really useful feedback.

One of the things I've since learned is that if you feel that friction, it’s a good idea to address it openly and remind everybody that we're all a team. That communication is so important.

Radmila Blazheska

Communication is key. In sales our pipeline meetings, where we follow up on leads and other related matters, I don't focus on the number of leads. Instead, I ask about opportunities. I ask about the deals closed this quarter and what is in the pipeline.

As a CMO, I'm concerned with the pipeline because if there aren't enough opportunities progressing, I need to sit down with my sales director and discuss how we can help and what needs to be done.

It's a two-way street; I receive calls from sales managers and BDR teams asking for help with campaigns and other issues.

Nothing is perfect, and there isn’t always perfect harmony between sales and marketing. Just the other day, we had a difficult call where marketing was like “Why aren’t you picking up the leads?” and sales was like, “We are! Why are you chasing us?” Ultimately, we realized that both teams needed to communicate better with each other.

So, communication is key, but it's also important to plan effectively. When it comes to events, I won't include any in the marketing plan unless I see that sales are committed and excited about attending.

While big shows and events are important for raising awareness, I won't spend money on them if the sales team isn't enthusiastic – what’s the point?

They should be the ones knocking on my door asking to attend an event. If they're not excited about it, it's not working.

Practical steps you can take right now to bring alignment between sales and marketing

James White

First, I’d like to reiterate what Mila said about getting alignment from sales on events and having them agree on slots to be filled with demand generation. Are we focusing on intimate events, mid-funnel events, or top-of-funnel events, and what are sales committing to?

Second, being much more intentional about the ROI we expect from our events, rather than just blowing the bank and seeing what happens, is another crucial aspect. While it may sound crazy, it's a common issue.

The third component is incentive alignment. At Klaviyo, we’ve only just aligned incentives between marketing and sales. Now that they’ve been brought together as part of our planning process, we expect to be in a much better position this year than last year.

Marina Pape

I’d say first, establish a clear attribution model. Whatever model you're using, ensure that everyone understands it to prevent any confusion or misinterpretation.

Second, every now and then do a reverse analysis of the best leads marketing has delivered for sales – the ones that ultimately resulted in closed deals.

Determine where these leads came from, what the model was, and what influenced them. Doing that analysis as a regular hygiene factor, perhaps every quarter, can give great insights.

Third, as marketers, we can’t make assumptions about what the sales team needs. I often assume I know what they need, but if I only have a certain amount of capacity each month to support sales, it'd be helpful to know whether, for example, they only need help writing LinkedIn posts for social selling.

Radmila Blazheska

I agree with James and Marina. I'd just say on top of that, transparency is key for achieving perfect alignment between sales and marketing. There may not be a perfect formula (or a perfect marriage!), but open communication and flexibility can help.

It’s also important to take away the pain for both teams. For example, our sales teams struggle with administrative tasks and updating the CRM, so we’re hiring sales admins to help us get more efficient follow-ups on leads.

Similarly, my marketing teams weren’t sure which campaigns would work because they don’t know the industry or the customers well enough, so I asked them to collaborate with sales on building campaigns and creating content.

My third piece of advice is to invest in martech to help build perfect alignment between sales and marketing.