While Marketing and Sales tend to operate as separate departments, their cohesiveness is essential in generating sales wins and customer growth. They share one store and ultimately one purpose.

Because the customer (current or potential) knows the brand from the outside they are uninterested in understanding where one department leave off and another picks up in the buyer’s journey. In order to win over a prospect a singular, value led story must be agreed upon by both teams.

Because aligned sales and marketing teams can improve customer retention by 36% and improve sales win rates by 38% understanding the value of alignment between sales and marketing, and how that alignment impacts sales and marketing outcomes, is so vital.

Consider:

When both teams understand their customer’s pain points they craft a singular, buyer-centric story.

When Sales and Marketing are in sync, they work together in their respective roles in achieving their shared goal of generating revenue by solving their customers’ business problems. They understand, and show empathy for, their buyer’s problems. And they articulate a solution of value.

Long sales cycles call for a long engagement cycle.

31% of B2B sales and marketing professionals reported that a lengthy sales cycle is their biggest challenge in their ability to create new revenue. The same professionals indicated that the leading cause of lost prospects is that they can’t keep leads engaged through the entire cycle. The shift to a digital buyer’s journey for B2B companies, rather than an in-person connection to the buyer, is challenging. And according to McKinsey, “Only about 20% of B2B buyers say they hope to return to in-person sales.” The B2B pipeline is more digital than ever.

Synergy makes good business sense.

28.6% of salespeople viewed a lack of data as a barrier to generating more revenue. Interestingly, only 7.6% of marketers noted this struggle. This suggests that increased data sharing as an obvious opportunity for cohesiveness while achieving shared goals. Increased resource sharing leads to less redundancy, more effective use of budget and higher returns.

Account-based marketing (ABM) needs cross-team alignment to work.

ABM pipelines with a collective revenue generation goal require higher buyer-centric messaging than more organic leads. It can be difficult to scale without the right tech stack to effectively manage an ABM campaign. Many of the software tools that manage a buyer’s journey empower ABM strategies such as targeting and personalization. LinkedIn studies have found 82% of B2B marketers said ABM greatly improves the alignment between marketing and sales. Because ABM initiatives require longer sales cycles, it is vital sales and marketing are in sync.