One of the single largest opportunities that you have for improving performance in the modern business environment involves aligning marketing and sales. This is a decision that brings with it a host of different benefits that can't be ignored, from dramatically improving your marketing return on investment to an increase in sales productivity. Misalignment between sales and marketing technologies and processes cost B2B companies 10% of revenue or more a year according to HubSpot, and they found that when smarketing occurs (sales and marketing alignment) companies see 38% higher sales win rate.
In many organizations, the sales and marketing teams are often seen as two completely separate and autonomous entities. Even though they're both working on what is essentially the same goal - facilitating the growth of the company - they often barely interact with one another in any type of appreciable way. Sales and marketing alignment, as its name suggests, is a way to combine the benefits of these two groups together to form a much stronger union overall.
Another great way to align your sales and marketing departments involves making sure that you're investing in the right types of technological solutions that make this possible in the first place. CRM or "customer relationship management" software is just one of many ways to accomplish this, for example.
In a CRM deployment, all departments are using the same software solution to store information about clients. This not only helps make sure that everyone has access to all information at all times, but it also helps guide customers through the sales funnel in a much more efficient and cost-effective way.
Your marketing department now has access to all client information via the sales department, allowing them to make much better decisions regarding where, how and (most importantly) why marketing dollars are being spent. Your sales department can also see the way that customers are interacting with the sales department, putting them in a much better position to meet their revenue goals at the same time.
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