The Road to Better Sales and Marketing Alignment

Posted on by Beth Negus Viveiros

Identifying the accounts that are the most valuable to your brand and concentrating your efforts on them can help align companies’ marketing and sales forces.

“The friction or lack of trust between marketing and sales is interesting, because both sides are focusing on growing revenue and driving the business forward,” notes Peter Isaacson, CMO, Demandbase, who recently chatted with Chief Marketer about the marketing and sales relationship.

Traditionally, friction has risen because both teams are approaching the goal differently. Marketing concentrates on generating leads to fill the sales funnel, while sales is looking for meetings with buyers and influencers. Sales teams often feel like they’re not being properly supported, but digital technologies that help marketers customize and personalize messages can help change that, says Isaacson.

A shift toward account based marketing can have a huge impact further down the pipeline, he continues. “The sales and marketing process has gotten so challenging—individuals are being bombarded constantly, but technology can help you identify accounts accurately and customize marketing based on industry.”

Isaacson suggests developing marketing and engagement plans against the accounts sales identifies s as the most valuable. “Scale your efforts,” he says. “Companies are getting smarter with data and doing great things with predictive analytics to identify the best prospects and focus attention on them. More and more tech is being developed for B2B marketers—B2B is an enormous market that can’t be ignored.”

Of course, a huge issue in B2B marketing is the fact that potential customers are waiting longer and longer before they connect with a potential vendor. By the time they contact a company to discuss potentially buying their product or service, they may already be 80% of the way towards making their decision.

“There’s definitely a trend towards maximizing the value you get out of the portion of the sales cycle before the hand raise,” he says.

More on B2B Marketing:

3 Reasons Your Employees Should Be Thought Leaders

Closing the Gap Between Traditional and Data Driven Marketing

Is Your Marketing Team Proactive? Self-Assess to Find Out

More

Related Posts

Chief Marketer Videos

by Chief Marketer Staff

In our latest Marketers on Fire LinkedIn Live, Anywhere Real Estate CMO Esther-Mireya Tejeda discusses consumer targeting strategies, the evolution of the CMO role and advice for aspiring C-suite marketers.

	
        

Call for entries now open

Pro
Awards 2023

Click here to view the 2023 Winners
	
        

2023 LIST ANNOUNCED

CM 200

 

Click here to view the 2023 winners!