What are some of your top strategies in driving alignment with Sales?

Strategies usually get defined bi-annually or annually and most of us don't have complete influence and control on what gets defined. So allow me to stray a bit and take this opportunity to share some 'tactics' that have worked for me.  1. Do you use common vocabulary? You will be surprised how many salespeople in your organization don't understand the difference between an 'acquired contact' and a 'marketing qualified lead'. Many times, this could be attributed to a combination of a lack of com ...Read More

Communication! Shared Slack channels, meet regularly and ask your sales team for input so they feel engaged and involved in decisions. Be transparent about how the marketing budget is spent and what is working and what isn't. Shared KPIs. The biggest mistake is disconnected goals. Having a marketing goal of driving leads and a sales goal of driving revenue rarely works out, in my experience. At a minimum, Demand Gen/Marketing needs a sales-qualified pipeline target to fill the top of the funnel. ...Read More

My advice can apply even outside of Sales - try to frame your interactions around the question - how can I help? Even more so lately, people feel overwhelmed with a constant shortage of time. Time is money for Sales and when possible, you want to establish this relationship from a lens of empathy and partnership. Here are three of my top strategies to drive alignment with Sales: Share insights. What better way to drive alignment and nurture a relationship than with ongoing information sharing? W ...Read More

Ensuring there's alignment between Sales and Marketing is always key. When working in B2B, I found these were some of the best ways to gain that alignment: Share Goals: Make sure we're all aiming at the same goals or OKRs. Make sure Sales is part of the planning process: Marketing can sometimes build campaigns in silos and then just hand it over to Sales. But it's always stronger if Sales is apart of that initial strategy and build process upfront. They are on the frontlines with prospects and e ...Read More

This is definitely a challenge from a demand generation point of view. I have approached this in 2 ways in my career. First I view sales as my customer. Specifically for B2B demand generation, which I have spent most of my career in, I'm typically tasked with helping to generate pipeline, by delivering sales ready contacts at targeted accounts, to sales teams. I start there. Second, as mentioned in another question, I try to build relationships built on trust with the major stakeholders in sales ...Read More

Prioritize, invest, and over-communicate. I can't emphasize the importance of not just trying to get aligned, but working diligently to remain aligned. Alignment is easy when things are going well. It's a lot more difficult when pipeline is drying up and/or deals aren't closing. It's important to do the work before a crisis happens. Spend time aligning on definitions. On attribution models. On roles and responsibilities. Align on what Marketing will be delivering - when, why, and the expected im ...Read More