This document summarizes a presentation about improving alignment between sales and marketing teams. It discusses how today's buyers complete most of their journey online before contacting sales. It then outlines four common misalignments between sales and marketing: not having aligned goals, marketing content that is difficult for sales to find and use, disagreeing on what makes a qualified lead, and leads not being passed to sales quickly enough. For each misalignment, it provides strategies for improvement, such as establishing a single sales funnel, creating centralized content repositories, jointly defining lead qualifications, and setting strict response time standards. The presentation argues that better alignment can lead to more revenue through higher lead quality, pipeline growth, conversion rates and faster response times.

1. Sales & Marketing:
B2B’s Newest Power Couple
#B2BSummit
April 29-30, 2015 | AT&T Park, San Francisco, CA
Adam Blitzer
SVP & GM Pardot, Salesforce
@adamblitzer

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Why Does Sales & Marketing Alignment Feels Like This?

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When It Could Feel Like This

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Agenda
The New Buyer’s Journey
The Cost of Misalignment
4 Common Sales & Marketing Conversations
Q&A

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Buyers Are More Connected Than Ever
Website
Social Media
Email
References
Community

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Buyers Control the Sales Cycle
ABOUT US CONSUMER
REVIEWS
SOCIAL
MEDIA
COMMUNITY
DISCUSSIONS
PRICING
PAGE
CONTACT
SALES
GOOGLE
SEARCH
By 2020, 85% of the buyer’s
journey will be completed
before the buyer reaches out to
sales.
85%

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Disconnected teams:
Marketing and Sales silos
Disconnected tools:
Fragmented, hard to access
and use
Disconnected story:
No holistic view of buyer
makes insights elusive
Most Companies Are Struggling to Adapt

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68%
of companies have
not identified their
sales funnel
79%
of Marketing
leads are never
converted to
Sales
Only 46%
of reps win more
than half of
potential deals
10%
of revenue lost
per year due to
Sales and
Marketing
misalignment
Limited
Visibility
Poor Lead
Quality
Not Enough
Leads
Low Lead
Conversion
Missed
Revenue
Target
The Cost of Being Disconnected

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“Only 30% of CMOs have a clear process or program to make sales
and marketing alignment a priority.”
-CMO Council

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Marketing and sales conversation #1*
*Real life sales and marketing leaders
VP, Sales
VP, Marketing
“We missed our target –
we need more air cover.”
“We send you tons of leads.
You just aren’t closing them.”

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Strategy #1:
(Re)align Goals

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Todays KPIs are Usually Misaligned
Sales Marketing

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Funnels & Pipelines are Divided
Visitor
Inquiry
MQL
SQL
Won
A divided funnel leads to
✖ lead volume over lead quality
✖ turf wars over leads
✖ marketing being a cost center
✖ content that focuses on lead generation
Sales
Marketing

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Get to a Single Funnel
A single funnel leads to
✔ a single end goal
✔ one scorecard for the entire business
✔ content that moves prospects through buying stages
✔ a better hand off / hand back (recycling) process
✔ trust
Visitor
Inquiry
MQL
SQL
Won
Marketing&Sales

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Pipeline and revenue:
where the rubber meets the road for
sales and marketing.

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Marketing and sales conversation #2*
*Real life sales and marketing leaders
VP, Sales
VP, Marketing
“You don’t make the right
content and we can’t
ever find what we need.”
“You never use it anyway!”

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Strategy #2:
Content That is Easy to Find & Use
(for reps!)

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Most Content Sits on the Shelf
“70% of content created by B2B marketing teams is never used by sales reps”
-SiriusDecisions
That’s because content is
 hard to find (not where the reps live)
 stale
 stage-agnostic
 persona-agnostic
 all first party
 not available in the right formats

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One Stop Shop Filter by Type Filter by Theme
A Central Repository (that isn’t terrible)

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Nurture Your Sales Team
Drive internal “demand” Make it fun!

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Nurture Your Sales Team
Chrome Extension Signature Management

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Content Review is a Team Sport
Mix hard data with anecdotes from the trenches.
Data Anecdotes

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Marketing and sales conversation #3*
*Real life sales and marketing leaders
VP, Sales
VP, Marketing
“The leads you send us
are terrible.”
“You aren’t following up with
them! .”

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Strategy #3:
Define a Marketing Qualified Lead

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Most Buyer Profiles Are Created in a Vacuum

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Both Sides Need to Agree on Definitions
SALES
What’s happening in the trenches
MARKETING
Market research & campaign data
TRUTH
DEFINE
MQLs and SQLs
together
ESTABLISH
an SLA between
teams
REVISIT
Every quarter

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Agree on Two Types of Scores per Persona
 Geography
 Industry
 Company size
 Title
 Tracked behavior
 Recency of activity
 Frequency of activity
 Lead source
Interest Fit

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Marketing and sales conversation #4*
*Real life sales and marketing leaders
VP, Sales
VP, Marketing
“You aren’t getting leads
to us fast enough.”
“You don’t follow up fast
enough.”

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Strategy #4:
Go Faster

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Speed Matters
“35-50% of sales go to the vendor that responds first.”
-InsideSales.com

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Establish SLAs
Once the definition of an MQL is agreed upon
 Establish aggressive SLAs for lead distribution
(should be seconds to minutes)
 Enforce an equally stringent SLA for lead follow-up
(should be minutes to tens of minutes)
 Track win rate and sales cycle by first follow-up time

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Why don’t sales reps follow up?
 They don’t know that a lead came in
 They are away from their desks
 They are working more pressing, “hot” leads
 The leads are obvious bad fits
(you solved this with your MQL definition didn’t you?)

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Interrupt your reps, they won’t complain!
Close rates go up when reps have recency & context
 Push alerts to your reps everywhere they work
(email, CRM, desktop, and phone)
 Give full context into prospect behavioral history
 Show them when a prospect is active
 Start with a pilot when rolling out alerts
 Consider specialization (inbound lead qualification)

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Companies that Align Grow Faster
Better AlignmentQuality LeadsPipeline Growth High Conversion
More
Revenue
Source: Math Marketing / Sirius Decisions / MarketingProfs
24%
faster three-year
revenue growth
25%
increase in Sales
qualified leads
67%
improvement in
close rates
60%
Increase in follow-
up within 24 hours

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Thank You