How to Prevent Sales & Marketing Misalignment

A company’s overall success is the result of collaborative relationships between different departments. In any company, two departments that appear to have natural synergy are the sales and marketing teams.

In general, the marketing team is primarily focused on promoting the company’s products or services and increasing brand awareness. The sales team, on the other hand, takes things a step further by ensuring the marketing team’s promotional efforts are converted into sales.

This is where promotional content comes in. The main purpose of marketing is to produce materials that will be used to promote products and services. These materials are also used by the sales team when they’re making presentations to potential buyers or customers.

That said, any disparities, gaps in communication, or misalignments between these two teams may lead to decreased lead generation. Why do sales and marketing misalignments happen, and how they can affect a company’s bottom line? Let’s discuss.

 

Misalignment Between Sales and Marketing

It’s important to understand that in any company, every department is connected, no matter how complex its corporate structure may be. In other words, if you think of a company as a person with two working hands, its left hand should always know what its right hand is doing. They should be in constant communication with each other. This also applies specifically to the sales and marketing teams. However, certain factors can cause misalignment between these two teams. Below are some of these factors:

• Poor Communication – As always, communication is the key. When brainstorming, it’s important that the marketing and sales teams are involved in the creation of promotional materials, because both of them will use these materials. They need to communicate. If they don’t, your sales team won’t be able to tell your marketing team what content resonates with prospective customers and what doesn’t work at all. Any misalignment can make it difficult for your company’s marketing and sales efforts to perform well.
• No Collaborative Effort – Apart from communication, there should be a constant collaboration between marketing and sales. When coming up with marketing strategies, the marketing team should seek help from the sales team to know precisely what they can do to help their efforts. On the other hand, the sales team should have a thorough understanding of the materials and strategies that the marketing team has come up with. It’s important to understand that both teams are at their best when they’re in sync with each other.

 

Outcomes of Misaligned Sales and Marketing

Any misalignment between marketing and sales can be quite detrimental to the business, as it can result in the following:

• Poor Leads – Misaligned teams will waste their energy, time, and effort on unqualified leads. The marketing and sales teams will end up blaming each other for not using the right content when approaching potential buyers or customers, coming on too strongly, approaching them too quickly, or worse. Misalignments can also result in no clear focus for both teams, which will make it a lot harder for them to generate leads and meet their targets.
• Decreased Revenue – We know that poor leads can result in fewer sales conversion, and this means a lack of growth. A lack of alignment can make closing deals much more challenging and your inbound strategy will suffer, you also won’t be able to stay ahead of the competition.

 

Final Words: Collaboration between Sales and Marketing

The bottom line of this discussion is to understand what causes misalignment between sales and marketing, and how this can affect your company’s ability to generate high-quality sales and growth. Erratic lead generation and low conversions are indications that there may be a disconnect between your teams and attention should be given to how to improve communication and synergy between them to ensure your corporate marketing doesn’t struggle.

 

If you think your sales and marketing teams could use some bonding time, get in touch with us today to see how we can help.