Five ways to start integrating your sales and marketing teams
Have you noticed your sales and marketing teams are working in silo and aren’t collaborating to drive the best quality leads?
The way to overcome this divide is through sales and marketing alignment, an approach that encourages better engagement and accelerated performance across both teams, resulting in 38% higher sales win rates (MarketingProfs).
When marketing and sales can move beyond their differences and work in tandem, they can simultaneously increase the revenue opportunity, shorten the sales and marketing cycle, and cut costs and improve your cost of acquisition. Here are our top five tips to make this happen.
1. Define common terms
According to CSO Insights, only 44% of companies have formally agreed on the definition of a qualified lead between sales and marketing.
Therefore, the first way to break down departmental silos is to outline definitions of the terms your teams will be working with every day. We’d recommend the following:
- Marketing lead (ML) – prospects who want to engage with your business
- Marketing qualified lead (MQL) – prospects that the marketing team have pre-qualified and considers good potential buyers
- Sales accepted lead (SAL) – leads that the sales team acknowledges are worthwhile and have committed to act on
2. Define the goals and strategy together
The next task for your sales and marketing teams is to clarify three keys: lead scoring, lead generation metrics, and sales and marketing processes.
Lead scoring
To determine their sales-readiness, you need a methodology for ranking leads before they come in, based on:
- The interest they show in your business and your proposition
- Their current position in the buying cycle
- Their fit in regard to your company
Lead generation metrics
Your marketing and sales teams should outline what specifically qualifies a lead as an MQL, SAL, or SQL.
These lead generation metrics will emphasise everyone’s individual involvement in moving the lead further down the funnel, with the end goal of closing the sale in sight.
Defined sales and marketing processes
Your sales and marketing processes should be clearly stated for each phase of the revenue cycle. As these systems become automated, everyone will perform at a higher level.
Getting robust systems in place also provides some documentation, so marketing can demonstrate how someone became an MQL, and sales has a record of their contact with that prospect.
3. Create joint key performance indicators (KPIs)
Key performance indicators (KPIs) are tangible benchmarks designed to help you measure your progress towards an objective.
You can also create overarching OKRs (objectives and key results), which will help your sales and marketing teams to align their work to a common goal.
| Marketing KPIs | Lead generation KPIs | Soft sales pipeline (top of funnel) KPIs | OKRs |
| Build your business’ profile and raise awareness to a broad target market
Provide ongoing sales support
Uptick in deals closed |
Number of EIs (leads)
Number of MQLs (marketing qualified leads)
Number of SALs (sales accepted leads – workable opportunities) |
PG ratio – for every £ spent on lead gen activity, how much pipeline does this generate, as a ratio
Marketing attribution – marketing attribution is a value that is assigned to supporting the sales process |
Manage YoY sustainable growth, without putting the core business at risk
Recruit and secure the right type of accounts
Start to develop a sustainable marketing pipeline that supports the sales process
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4. Replace the sales funnel with a revenue cycle
Rather than the traditional sales funnel, your business should be focused on a revenue cycle. As part of this, you want to aim for clients with lifetime value (LTV), providing you with a revenue yield YOY, rather than a single transaction.
Typically, LTV can be measured between one to three or one to five years. So, if you win an account, it’s worth asking: how much do you believe that account will generate over a three to five year period? This will deliver much improved ROI and heavily reduce your cost of acquisition and transaction.
5. Structure your team
Next, you’ll want to establish well-defined, separate roles and responsibilities for each team to fulfil, so there’s no conflict between marketing and sales outputs.
| Marketing roles | Sales roles | Accounts roles |
| At the top end of the funnel, these roles focus on building awareness, education, and soft pipeline (marketing pipeline):
– Demand generation – Product marketers – Content marketers – Digital marketing specialists – Brand specialists – Event marketing |
Sales teams look at the bottom end of the funnel to convert leads into customers:
– SDRs (sales development reps) / internal sales managers / internal sales – BDRs (business development reps – Pre-sales specialists – Sales executive – High-touch sales (director level)
Depending on your business and sales model, you may not require all of these roles |
The third team is separate from marketing and sales and comprises of:
– Key account managers / account managers – Account directors – Customer services – Customer success executives and managers – Customer / client services directors
These roles are often key to holding a company’s sales and marketing teams together, focusing on the key business needs, rather than the granular or departmental tasks. Their focus is to review, contact, and qualify marketing-generated leads and deliver them to sales account executives.
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Key takeaways
In a hurry? Here’s a quick breakdown of how you can start integrating your sales and marketing teams:
- Start by defining the terms you’ll be working with every day: marketing lead (ML), marketing qualified lead (MQL), and sales accepted lead (SAL).
- Both teams should define the goals and strategy for winning new clients together – they can do this using lead scoring and lead generation metrics. They should have their processes clearly outlined too.
- To align your work to a common goal, your teams should create joint key performance indicators (KPIs), as well as overarching objectives and key results (OKRS)
- Replace the sales funnel with a revenue cycle and aim for clients with lifetime value (LTV), rather than a single transaction.
- Establish well-defined, separate roles and responsibilities for your marketing and sales teams.
Are you ready to take a giant leap forward with your marketing?
If you’re ready to build your dream marketing team, and take a giant leap forward in the way you market and scale your business, then please get in touch for an informal chat on how we can help you achieve your aspirations for your business.