We’ve preached the importance of sales-marketing alignment before, so let’s take a look at some companies that have put this approach into practice.
The benefits of creating a collaborative environment for sales and marketing include:
- Improved communication
- Clearer messaging
- Better lead quality
- Increased revenue
- Enhanced customer experience
- Eliminates silos
- Shared goals
- Increased efficiency
- More informed decisions
- Better use of resources
In short, companies that implement sales-marketing alignment strategies are more successful. But what does this alignment look like in the real world?
Rybbon (Now BHN Rewards): A Circle, Not a Funnel
Before Rybbon became BHN Rewards, then-CEO Jignesh Shah said: “At Rybbon, instead of a marketing-to-sales funnel, we believe in a marketing-to-sales circle. Marketing campaigns are launched and supported by coordinated sales follow-up. Sales and marketing meet weekly to discuss the results of these campaigns and ultimately evaluate their effectiveness. Sales' feedback to marketing then helps to guide decisions on what campaigns to do next."
The idea of a marketing-to-sales circle instead of a funnel is an exciting one because it facilitates the development of return customers. When a prospect is successfully converted into a customer, they are immediately transitioned back into the circle for new marketing content.
Without strong collaboration, this arrangement wouldn’t be possible.
Outreach: Not Blame, but a Shared Challenge
Mark Kosoglow from Outreach emphasized that marketing and sales shouldn’t waste their time blaming one another for poor results. Rather, these two teams should view their work as intertwined.
Kosoglow said, “You need to decide not to have a blame-game mindset or culture. When the pipeline is viewed as a shared challenge, then it becomes easier to talk about what needs to be done in order to improve the situation.”
What a great attitude to foster in your organization. Far too often, sales and marketing are siloed into their own separate areas. When these groups don’t have much interaction, it is far too easy for one group to blame the other for the struggles that the team is experiencing. But that blame makes it far too easy to ignore possible solutions. It also fosters negative attitudes towards coworkers who could be incredible collaborators.
American Express: A Shared Content Hub for Marketing and Sales
American Express conducted research on their business travelers, who make up a large percentage of their cardholders. With the help of an industry association, they gathered significant data about their cardholders’ habits, behaviors, pain points, needs, and motivations.
American Express ended up creating a cross-functional “social selling team” that was made up of reps from different areas of the company – including both sales and marketing.
Marketing took the lead in creating content based on the results of the collected data, and Sales provided critical customer insight, which kept the content customer-centric. Unified, this team created a content hub that produced over 100 million publications, more than 1500 page visits, and a 100% increase in LinkedIn engagement.
This demonstrates the significant value of marketing-sales alignment. When working together with a unified goal, you can create incredible amounts of meaningful and effective content.
What Can We Learn from These Examples?
The examples of Rybbon, Outreach, and American Express demonstrate that there are tangible benefits to aligning sales and marketing teams.
It is worth your time and effort to foster collaboration through circular workflows, shared mindsets, unified goals, and the leveraging of complementary strengths. All of this combined leads to increased efficiency and a dedicated focus on the customer.
The key ingredients for success these real-world companies used were:
- Leadership setting a collaborative tone
- Open communication channels through regular joint meetings
- Establishing clear Service Level Agreements between teams
- Sharing data and insights across departments
- Jointly mapping customer journeys
- Incentivizing behaviors supporting joint success
In the end, sales and marketing alignment eliminates friction, enhances experiences, and drives growth. As you can see from these examples, a shared vision between sales and marketing can lead to improved conversions, expanded reach, better-qualified leads, and – most importantly – increased revenue.
Cogo & Co. Can Bring Your Sales and Marketing Into Alignment
At Cogo & Co., we love working with companies who understand that sales and marketing work best when there is a collaborative and shared vision.
To find out if you’re ready for growth, take the Cogo & Co. Growth Readiness Score. Get your results and find out how you can improve your sales and marketing strategies quickly and easily so that you start seeing better results right away.
Schedule a free consultation with Cogo & Co. to learn more!
