In an ever-changing digital business environment, the necessity for collaboration between organizational departments has never been greater. Business success is especially dependent upon the coordinated operations between marketing and sales teams, but oftentimes these two key departments are hindered as they attempt to hit goals that benefit their function and not necessarily the overall organization. While marketing is generally tasked with supplying as many high-quality leads as possible, recent studies have shown that once the sales team receives those leads, 50% of them are ignored and 79% of qualified leads never turn into sales. So why does sales fail to meet their quota when marketing is reaching their lead gen goals?
There are various resources available that address this issue, including this eBook on hot to align marketing and sales, but one reason many site for this disconnect is due simply to how marketing and sales are defining “qualified lead.” For example, salespeople might be focused on a specific industry or company size but the marketing team could be supplying leads that do not meet these parameters. From the marketers’ viewpoint, they are hitting their MQL goals, but because they are not well aligned with the sales and revenue goals, sales won’t be able to meet their quota and growth goals. This can disproportionately affect the amount of target contacts that sales can work with and close on.
Organizations need to break down siloes and align marketing and sales teams to work cooperatively and to look at the bigger picture rather than their isolated tasks. They must pursue common business objectives and shared company goals. Marketing metrics must be aligned with sales quotas and sales teams should not only make their pipelines transparent, but they should continuously analyze the leads coming in and provide feedback to marketing.
This is often easier said than done. Bringing marketing and sales together requires time and effort from both sides. At the same time, businesses can take advantage of modern technology solutions, which will enable the sharing of data across departments, automate core business processes and streamline collaboration. For example, intelligent CRM tools can better align marketing and sales by helping to create a roadmap of actionable steps to start getting the most out of your pipeline and boost close rates and win more business.
Dive deeper and start taking action in aligning marketing and sales by reading this eBook.
bpm'online CRM
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