Road Blocks to Smarketing Alignment
In a recent DemandMetric study, 66 percent of companies reported complete alignment between sales and marketing enabling them to achieve their revenue goals.
True alignment within your organization all comes down to a simple equation: Sales + Marketing = Smarketing.
Unfortunately, for most companies, the path that leads to improved revenue isn’t always so clear. We’ve identified four major roadblocks that hinder smarketing alignment and all the ways you can avoid them.
1. Failure to Communicate
Successful internal communication is all about trust. If your sales and marketing teams can’t communicate openly and honestly with each other, internal frustrations and misunderstandings will fester.
Open up a dialogue between your sales and marketing departments to ensure everyone is directly communicating to each other instead of simply talking at one another. With complete transparency at play, your teams cater to customer needs more effectively.
2. Lack of Shared Purpose
It is all too easy for marketing and sales to view each other as “us versus them.” Internal communication might be excellent, but dialogue won’t help much if marketing generates leads and tosses them to sales to make deals without any collaboration at all.
Encourage your teams to work together by establishing shared goals and a pipeline between the two departments. To accomplish these goals, they must agree on key metrics such as lead quality criteria and the target market.
3. Mismanaged Data
Just as a company must discuss goals, lead sharing is also necessary. Mishandling data and skipping crucial lead qualification steps are surefire ways to muck up your lead generation.
Rely on processes such as closed-loop reporting so your marketers and sales reps can make better, data-backed decisions. With the data as your guide, you reinforce collaboration and communication between departments.
4. Absence of Accountability
No matter what sector or industry you’re in, shouldering responsibility goes a long way, especially within sales and marketing departments. When individuals aren’t clear on what they “own,” confusion ensues. Inconsistencies arise, such as duplicate work efforts or tasks being ignored entirely.
A clearly defined lead-handoff process will keep sales engagement flowing, decreasing the margin of error for both departments. With a set understanding of who does what, and when, your teams ensure every lead in the pipeline has the highest chance of converting and eventually closing.
It’s no secret that a company finds the most success when their departments are in sync. The hurdles you face on the smarketing path are by no means small, but if your teams communicate openly, share freely, ensure lead quality, and understand responsibility, you will be well on your way to achieving total alignment.