Two days ago, I received a survey from my friends at two marketing agencies, MPull and We Are Marketing. It was on one of my favorite topics: sales and marketing alignment.

And while the survey is written for sales and marketing leaders, I paused and reflected as a new CEO in charge of both: “Are OUR sales and marketing teams fully aligned at Databox?”

If I’m being honest, the answer was “sorta”, until today. We’re now a lot more coordinated after doing some math and setting some targets.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who will stop and think (and then hopefully act) after taking this survey.

It’s ironic because for the last 10 years, I’ve helped others improve alignment, but this is the first time I’m doing it for a company I’m leading.

Personally, I’m looking forward to the results of the survey since I haven’t seen a recent one that covers the topic well. And most of the proof for sales and marketing alignment is anecdotal.

But if you need some more reasons to take the survey, here’s seven additional ways it might help you:

1. If you are trying to convince your boss that your sales and marketing functions are misaligned or maybe even aligned, you will now have a report to backup your thoughts.
2. Likewise, if you are an agency trying to pitch for some “smarketing” work, you will have a report to backup your findings.
3. By taking part in the survey, you will get early access to the findings.
4. The report will include full responses from several open ended questions in the survey. You will learn how others are addressing the alignment or misalignment issue!
5. This report should help you identify areas within sales and marketing that you can investigate for your company and identify low hanging fruit initiatives to implement.
6. If there is friction between your sales and marketing teams, use this report as an “ice-breaker” as part of your first workshop to start removing that friction.
7. And the obvious 3 reasons:

• With more respondents, the better the insights we get will be!
• You stand a chance to win an Amazon voucher.
• And you stand a chance to get featured in the report, potentially bringing leads and at the very least brand awareness for your company.

If these reasons have inspired you to take part in the survey and resulting report, here is the link again to take part: https://wearemarketing.typeform.com/to/V1Fz0v

And if you don’t know what I mean by sales and marketing, here’s a good primer from HubSpot and a few resources from Marketo.

And if you are aligned, but need a simple dashboard to track your sales and marketing results in real time on any device, here’s my recommended template and how to use it.