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Since sales and marketing both drive customers down the pipeline, it’s no wonder that the two departments often work together. When we surveyed more than 170 companies about their sales and marketing alignment, the majority told us that sales have at least some influence on marketing. About 45% of the respondents reported that their sales have a significant influence on their marketing.
With these two departments teaming up at many companies, aligning them helps you get the most out of their efforts. In an aligned organization, their goals and strategies should serve the same purposes, and they should each know what the other department is doing.
In partnership with Knowmad, Growth, Resend, and other partners, we surveyed 170+ companies to find out how B2B companies align their sales and marketing teams. This survey is connected to the Google Analytics 4, HubSpot CRM, and HubSpot Marketing Benchmarks for B2B Companies Benchmark Group.
We also ran a live DBUG session in September 2024 where seven experts analyzed and discussed the survey results.
These two initiatives gave us insights into these topics:
Before we can find ways to better align sales and marketing in B2B, we need to understand what B2B companies are currently doing to achieve this alignment. So, the closed-ended questions in our survey focused on current alignment strategies and results, covering three areas:
For context behind further answers, let’s explore how the responding businesses operate.
Most of the companies in our survey are on the smaller side and have 50 or fewer employees.
The sales teams among our respondents tended to be slightly bigger than the marketing teams. While the average size of sales teams is 18, the average size of marketing teams is 15.
HubSpot is the top choice of CRM among respondents, with 48.70% of them naming it their go-to software.
About one-third of respondents report that 50% to 80% of their lead generation comes from digital marketing.
With all of the above in mind, how do respondents’ sales and marketing departments communicate with each other?
When we asked companies about which areas their sales teams provide input for marketing activities, the top answers were:
Most respondents rate the effectiveness of their sales and marketing teams’ communication as good to excellent, showing a high degree of satisfaction among them.
Even when communication is already good, sales and marketing alignment requires ongoing work. What do respondents do to promote alignment, and how do they measure it?
The top answers companies gave when we asked about their current alignment strategies were:
Respondents then measure the success of sales and marketing alignment through these metrics:
The closed-ended questions in our survey covered common ways to align sales and marketing, and we explored those tactics further in our open-ended questions. Some of the highlights covered both time-tested and unconventional tactics such as:
Many survey participants brought up data platform and CRM sharing as a strategy for sales and marketing alignment. Using the same data between the two departments allows for more cohesive performance tracking and goal setting.
“We’ve implemented a practice that focuses on data-sharing between our sales and marketing teams. By using a shared platform where both teams can access customer data, campaign performance, and feedback, we support real-time collaboration,” says Manoj Kumar from Orderific.
Kumar shares an example: “For instance, our sales team can provide insights into customer needs and concerns, which helps marketing create more targeted campaigns. As a result, we’ve seen a 25% increase in lead conversions over the last six months. This initiative not only aligns our teams but also enhances our understanding of our restaurant owners’ needs.”
Cache Merrill describes similar success with this strategy at Zibtek. Merrill says, “We’ve found that integrating our sales and marketing efforts through a shared CRM platform has been particularly effective in fostering collaboration. This platform allows both teams to access and analyze customer data in real-time, ensuring that marketing campaigns are aligned with sales goals and customer needs.”
Merrill continues, “The practice has led to more targeted and effective marketing efforts, resulting in higher conversion rates and better customer retention. Additionally, the shared platform has improved communication between the teams, allowing for quicker adjustments and more agile responses to market changes.”
If you already use this strategy, you can make it more effective by building a CRM KPI dashboard to share between the two departments. This dashboard will help everyone focus on the same metrics and goals.
The most typical strategy for keeping sales and marketing aligned is to hold regular meetings. But, the quality of these meetings determines exactly how effective they’ll be. The following respondents ensure that sales and marketing actually help each other during meetings for better alignment.
Jarret Austin shares that Bankruptcy Canada runs cross-functional workshops rather than just meetings: “One particularly effective practice we’ve implemented to foster collaboration between our sales and marketing teams is our regular cross-functional workshops. These workshops are designed to create an open dialogue where both teams can share insights, challenges, and success stories.”
Austin adds:
“We’ve found that when sales teams share feedback from clients directly with marketing, it helps fine-tune our campaigns to better address the needs of our target audience. As a result, we’ve seen a noticeable increase in lead quality, which has directly contributed to higher conversion rates. This collaborative approach has also strengthened interdepartmental relationships, creating a more cohesive company culture.”
Jarret Austin
Owner at Bankruptcy Canada
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According to Carmen Mendoza, the Booking Agent Info team zones in on one aspect of lead generation – lead magnets – to bring marketing and sales together. Mendoza says, “Our most successful effort has been weekly ‘Lead Magnet Meetings’. Every Monday, the sales and marketing teams meet to discuss the latest marketing campaigns, analyze lead generation data, and develop creative strategies to turn leads into paying clients.”
“For instance, in one recent campaign aimed at corporate event planners, the marketing team released a targeted e-book on ‘Engaging Virtual Events with Top Talent’. The sales team used that resource as a ‘lead magnet’ during outreach calls, generating not only high-quality leads but also positioning Booking Agent Info as a thought leader in virtual entertainment. Since these meetings began, lead conversion rates have jumped by 15%,” Mendoza concludes.
If you don’t feel like your alignment meetings have the impact you’d like, look for ways to get more collaborative and follow our general tips for successful weekly meetings.
Sales and marketing can have very different day-to-day tasks, which can lead to a disconnect between the two teams. Firsthand experience with these duties can help them understand what the other team is going through.
Bartosz Wrobel shares one activity Gorrion ran that helped sales and marketing understand each other better: “During one of the company meetings, we had a fun activity, which also helped enhance the partnership between sales and marketing. Each department had some ‘special tasks’, and we thought that it would be a great idea to swap teams. So the people responsible for marketing had to come up with some marketing strategies, and the marketers were supposed to prepare sales propositions.”
Wrobel adds, “It was great fun, everyone liked that approach, and even the other departments wanted to stay longer and see how the situation unfolded. However, the second goal of this fun activity was met. Both teams understood [each other’s struggles] better and saw how their decisions impact the other team.”
One of the most difficult aspects of alignment to deal with is managing disagreements between teams. When sales and marketing have different ideas of the right path to take, it becomes challenging to please both sides. You can mitigate this issue from the start by giving both teams the same KPIs to work with.
James Hook explains how Neurogan Health’s shared KPIs between marketing and sales promote unity. Hook says, “What we have found works best when fostering collaboration between sales and marketing is metrics. Shared metrics seem to drive these departments to unnatural highs. By establishing shared KPIs and regular tracking of their performances we were able to create a cross-functioning department. Creating a truly unique collaborative environment is almost like an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object.”
Hook continues:
“By sharing KPIs, both teams support each other in reaching goals, focusing on areas for improvement, and then of course the joint celebration when they succeed. This approach has skyrocketed our sales and increased creativity in our marketing campaigns. Salespeople generally know what clients want, and how they want it. Marketing teams are brilliant at setting up sales pitches. These two departments should always work together.”
James Hook
Consulting Chiropractor and Vendor at Neurogan Health
Another question we explored in the open-ended part of our survey is what the top challenges companies face in sales and marketing alignment are and how they plan to address them. Many of these challenges and solutions also came up in our DBUG session when marketing and sales leaders discussed the survey results.
The following challenges and solutions came up in our survey and the DBUG session:
During the DBUG session, three experts noticed that companies’ perception of their alignment and their actual alignment might not match. The high satisfaction that companies shared in the survey didn’t line up with what they saw in their work.
William McKee from Knowmad Digital Marketing noticed the huge influence sales has on marketing and how it could affect alignment. Previous parts of the discussion highlighted how hard it can be to get sales to engage with marketing. “Marketing sometimes doesn’t even have a seat at the table where decisions are getting made,” he says. So, if sales calls all of the shots, is it actually aligned with marketing?
Rick Kranz of Weidert Group added that he and others in the profession don’t see as much alignment in B2B companies as the survey suggests. Even when a company might report good alignment on an intake survey, these consultants hear a different story when they get on a call.
Christopher Nault of Growth vouched for this observation, saying, “When I’ve sent the survey, I always offer up the option to take the survey without meeting with me. I wanna make a safe place for them to answer honestly, and for those that do, the result is, oh, we’re super aligned. Cool. Everybody that’s taken the time to meet with me has shared some level of lack of alignment, usually high.”
Christopher pointed out that bringing in a third party can help, based on his experience as a consultant. Employees might be reluctant to share any issues they have with others in the organization but feel safer with someone outside of the business.
One problem that came up in the open-ended answers to the survey was inconsistent product knowledge between marketing and sales. The companies that experienced this issue put more effort into knowledge sharing among departments for better marketing and sales results.
“One of our biggest challenges is aligning the legal knowledge needed for our marketing content with the sales team’s approach to client engagement. Ensuring that our marketing materials are both legally accurate and persuasive can be a complex task,” says Jonathan Feniak of LLC Attorney.
Feniak continues, “To address this, we’ve implemented a review process where our legal team collaborates with marketing to vet content before it’s published. This ensures that our messaging is compliant while still being compelling. The result has been a more trustworthy brand image and a reduction in the number of legal inquiries during the sales process, streamlining operations.”
MIRA Safety’s Roman Zrazhevskiy faced a similar problem and solution. Zrazhevskiy says, “The biggest challenge we face in aligning our sales and marketing strategies is ensuring that both teams are equally informed about the technical aspects of our products. Given the specialized nature of our safety gear, it’s essential that both sales and marketing have a deep understanding of product features and benefits.”
Zrazhevskiy continues, “To address this, we’ve implemented joint training sessions where both teams are educated on new products and industry trends. This initiative has helped bridge the knowledge gap, leading to more informed marketing campaigns and a more confident sales force. The result has been improved customer satisfaction and increased sales.”
Another issue that came up in the DBUG discussion was a lack of alignment on the tactics that drive leads due to confusion on the customer journey.
Eddie Reynolds of Union Square Consulting emphasized that shared KPIs and data don’t automatically equal alignment:
“You have shared goals and metrics, but what does that mean? Are we all driving towards a revenue number, or is it that we agree that marketing should hit this MQL number, and then we’re arguing about why sales isn’t following up? How well have we defined what [a marketing qualified lead] is, what [a sales accepted lead] is, what a qualified sales opportunity is? If we go and ask everyone on the team from marketing to sales, do they have the same understanding of what that is? Is there actually a document that shares what that means?”
Eddie Reynolds
CEO and Revenue Operations Strategy Consultant at Union Square Consulting
As a result, Reynolds sees sales and marketing teams talking about high-level tactics rather than what each team can do to drive leads and conversions. They can’t “get into the weeds” of how to generate revenue.
Fortunately, this problem has a clear solution: Developing a customer journey map that defines what each stage looks like so sales and marketing can define leads. You can use Databox’s customer lifecycle framework as inspiration.
The DBUG discussion also covered the issue of different ideas of alignment between the people involved. In addition to sales and marketing having different alignment goals, people within each team can have separate ideas.
Michael Maximoff from Belkins mentioned that in his personal experience, companies that focused on retention and a customer’s lifetime value (LTV) had the best alignment. But conversely, not having an alignment goal to agree on can have the opposite effect.
Maximoff agreed with earlier points in the conversation related to the importance of working out smaller disagreements. Rather than stretching out alignment meetings with individual disagreements, sales and marketing team members should have frequent informal discussions so everyone can have a broad goal to work towards in meetings. “So that there are a lot of things that both teams can argue and can align on behind closed doors, and then only go back to [their] teams with a united front rather than discussing and arguing during the open conversation,” Maximoff says.
Sometimes, the problem with alignment lies in the company structure itself. You may need to consider how your company structure affects your alignment to get sales and marketing working in harmony.
For example, Henry Pellerin from VantagePoint Marketing brought up that alignment can look different in various industries. He works a lot with B2B manufacturing companies, where marketing is often siloed from sales. Looking at the survey had him discussing with other experts ways to achieve alignment in this industry, such as bringing the CEO in to change priorities.
Caroline Smith from Smudged brought up that a company’s country can affect its structure, too. Just between the United Kingdom and United States alone, you’ll find different titles and structures among sales and marketing departments. With so many companies going global, where can they find proper alignment? She agreed with Henry that the solution to this kind of alignment issue is to promote alignment from the top down.
Easy Mode Media’s Ben McLaughlan discovered that alignment also requires buy-in from leadership from personal experience. “As the Founder/CEO who oversees all operations, I thought I had a good handle on the process of information from the sales process to influence the marketing strategy. I was wrong,” McLaughlan says.
So, McLaughlan turned alignment into a team effort rather than a solo job. “Our sales team now writes all questions down, word for word, they get on phone calls and document them. This allows us to see common patterns over time and develop better objection responses and content marketing. This took our ads from failing in months one and two to generating 11.5x ROI for the year. The process and communication between these two departments are incredibly powerful and the process can always be better,” McLaughlan says.
One of the most common sentiments shared in the open-ended section of the survey was that sales and marketing teams had different metrics and goals, making it difficult to align them. Here are two companies that shared that problem and how they’ve handled it.
“Right now, the main problem is that marketing is focused on the sales pipeline, while sales cares about actual revenue,” says Alan Muther from Ardoz Digital. “In meetings, marketing talks about the pipeline, and sales talks about not making enough money. Marketing is too caught up in whether they’re hitting their pipeline targets. Today, marketing and sales teams face lots of challenges, but for us, the biggest issue is sometimes the lack of both internal and external transparency. Even though a lot of people know this is a problem, there’s still not enough openness about planning and changing strategies, aligning with revenue goals, and being responsible for costs. And while our marketing budgets are growing fast, even more than technology budgets.”
Muther continues, “So, it’s becoming really important for marketing to show how it’s helping to increase overall sales. We think tools that can show how marketing contributes to making more money are really important for this. In our B2B agency, we’ve made a joint ROI (Return on Investment) dashboard with the sales team. This is another way that Account-Based Marketing (ABM) helps bring marketing and sales closer together, especially when it comes to measuring success.”
Made Online’s Iva Jovanovic says, “The greatest challenge in aligning our sales and marketing strategies is the disparity in metrics and goals. The sales team typically prioritizes immediate revenue generation, whereas the marketing team wants brand awareness and long-term engagement.”
Jovanovic adds, “Because of this, we established a shared KPI framework to keep both teams focused on the same goals. This framework includes metrics that can be influenced by both teams, such as customer lifetime value and lead quality. As a result, we have seen a more cohesive strategy, resulting in a 25% increase in overall sales performance over the last six months.”
You might have noticed that many of the challenges and solutions related to sales and marketing alignment have to do with metrics and goals. As you set KPIs and goals for these departments, clarity is key to progress. But, if you don’t know how your company’s marketing and sales performance compares to similar businesses, it’s hard to evaluate that performance in the first place.
That’s why we created the Google Analytics 4, HubSpot CRM, and HubSpot Marketing Benchmarks for B2B Companies Benchmark Group. When you join this group, you can compare these metrics to other companies in exchange for anonymously sharing your data:
…and more!
It’s free to join as long as you have a Databox account with the metrics you want to track. Sign up for a Databox account and join the group here.
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Melissa King is a freelance writer who helps B2B SaaS companies spread the word about their products through engaging content. Outside of the content marketing world, she writes about video games. Check out her work at melissakingfreelance.com.
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