Smarketing: Your Guide to Sales and Marketing Alignment

Let’s face it: we’re living in a time of hypercompetitive business. If you’ve not got a direct competitor, you’ve got multiple semi-competitors that do elements of what you do.

How’s a company meant to level up to stand out? …and instead of giving you time to think about it – we’re gonna tell you.

Sales and marketing alignment. Four words, two departments, one goal. 🤝

This alignment has become essential for organizations looking to drive growth and stay ahead of the competition. The process of aligning these two teams can lead to improved lead generation, increased revenue growth, and better customer experiences.

In this post, we’ll explore what sales and marketing alignment is, why it benefits you, and how you can put smarketing* in action for ultimate success.

*We absolutely will not accept anything negative you have to say about this phrase.

What is smarketing (sales and marketing alignment)?

Sales and marketing alignment – or smarketing – is a super important aspect of any successful business strategy. It refers to the coordination and collaboration between your sales and marketing teams to achieve common goals and adjectives.

It means sharing goals, strategies, and tactics across both departments, along with any data, insights, and feedback to help refine those strategies and tactics.

Basically, share everything. Ev-uh-ree-thing.

Sales and marketing alignment is all about breaking down silos and creating a unified approach to customer engagement. Because to level up, scale, and win big, you need a shared understanding of customer needs and preferences – along with a willingness to work together towards common goals.

And once you read the benefits of this alignment, that willingness will come pretty easy. 👇

The benefits of sales and marketing alignment

If you’re wondering how to know if your sales and marketing is aligned, you’ll be seeing these benefits already. If you know you don’t have a smarketing (ha, got you again) alignment at all, then you’ll have these to look forward to.

1) Better communication

Communication is essential when it comes to any alignment. If you’re working on how your sales and marketing teams work together, communication plans will be a huge factor because, well… it’s how you communicate?

Seeing as comms are a big aspect in both marketing and sales roles, you guys should be pretty good at it.

2) Increased revenue

Teamwork makes the dream work, and sales and marketing clubbing together is no exception. It can encourage more effective lead generation and lead nurturing, because you’re both targeting the same audience and persona, so know how they work.

This magical collaboration helps marketing develop stronger campaigns that target the right audience with the right messaging, and make it easier for sales to follow up on leads more efficiently and on-brand.

3) Improved customer experience

At the end of the day, it’s the customer that’s spending their money, so customer experience is a really important aspect of closing a deal, but also retention and referrals (if that’s your bag).

And one thing that improves customer experience and satisfaction is consistency. There should be no part of the sales journey that feels jarring to your prospect. The transition from marketing efforts into the hands of sales should be smooth sailing, and marketing and sales alignment will help with that.

4) Stronger insights and analytics

Yes, the alignment between sales and marketing means two teams, one goal, but you know what else is pretty good? Two great teams who have worked, and continue to work on data, analytics, and reporting.

Data sharing gives you a more complete view of the customer journey, helping to identify patterns and trends that may not be apparent when looking at data in silos.

Not only do you have past insights which can influence or inform your combined efforts, but more sophisticated analytics can be developed to take both departments into account too. For example, by analyzing data on customer engagement and conversion rates, sales and marketing teams can identify the most effective channels and tactics for reaching different customer segments.

☝️ Name a more iconic duo… We’ll wait.

How to do it: Sales and marketing alignment best practices

So, how do marketing and sales work together to achieve ultimate business success? Here is a step-by-step guide:

Step 1: Define common goals and metrics

Both your sales and marketing teams need to work together to identify the common goals they can work towards.

This includes goals like:

• Increasing brand awareness
• Generating leads
• Improving lead quality
• Shortening sales cycles
• Increasing revenue

If you’re shooting in the opposite directions, there’s going to be issues with your pipeline and moving prospects through the sales funnel.

Besides, if you’re both aiming for the same goals, you’ll get there faster. 💪

Step 2: Establish your target audience

Developing detailed buyer personas will make sure you’re in sync with who the heck you’re aiming yourself at or talking to. To sell well, you need to understand who your ideal customers are.

With this insight, your messaging can be far more targeted and relevant, improving its overall effectiveness. Hello, bump up in engagement rate.

Step 3: Work on clear communication

As we said, communication is absolutely key to marketing and sales alignment. Without it, things would just be kinda quiet and very not-aligned.

Establishing regular communication channels between the two teams will help ensure that both teams are aware of what the other is doing. This can be as simple as a sales-won channel on Slack, or a content hub.

Regular meetings, shared dashboards, and shout-outs will help to keep everyone on the same page.

Step 4: Create a shared understanding of the customer journey

Whether you’ve worked together before or not, both teams have their own insights. Here’s where Team Smarketing combines their knowledge and data to create a shared understanding of what the customer journey actually looks like. This will inform and strengthen both your marketing and sales strategies.

That’s right – move over Barack and Michelle Obama, there’s a new power couple in town.

Step 5: Implement shared technology tools

If your comms and understanding are in line, your next step is to get how you work in line too. From lead generation through to tracking and reporting, there are a bunch of tools you can use. And when you’re two separate teams, that can mean even more tools – some of them doing the same thing.

Start by establishing a single source of truth – ensure that the systems that overlap and are used to measure success are shared between marketing and sales and both orgs are looking at the same picture. Here are a few examples:

• Your CRM system (database of customer and prospect information)
• Your BI (business intelligence) system used to track campaigns and deal
• Your lead scoring system
• Your market research and target market analysis

If you are syncing on these, it will make your sales and marketing efforts a lot more streamlined – and easier as a result.

Step 6: Provide joint training and development opportunities for both teams

Joint training and development opportunities will help sales and marketing teams to improve their skills and knowledge generally, but also in terms of each other’s roles, responsibilities, and perspectives. Any training collateral will prove particularly useful when onboarding new hires, but also when members of the team need a little refresh or want to check on consistency.

This kind of training is also where you can work on all the previous steps, to make sure they’re optimized and working best for you and your business.

“Alexa, play When 2 Become 1 by The Spice Girls”

That’s it, that’s how you combine your sales and marketing team to level up and achieve your business goals, hopes and dreams. ✨

With Similarweb, you can have a single suite to ensure your teams are operating on the same data and assumptions. Streamline your market research, generate new leads and win them over.

Delivering game-changing insights and competitive advantage for sales and marketing teams in any organization (in any industry), you’re about to up your game.

Get ready to truly understand your audience, their pain points, and their status with our full range of fresh digital insights, and reap the benefits of:

📈 Marketing campaigns that actually convert

📈 Outbound email campaigns that actually book meetings

📈 Value selling that actually closes deals

If driving your business forward sounds good to you, or if you’d like to find out more, get in touch today:

FAQs

What is sales and marketing alignment?

Sales and marketing alignment is the process of bringing together your sales and marketing teams to work towards a common goal, resulting in improved lead generation, customer experiences, and revenue growth.

Why is sales and marketing alignment important?

Sales and marketing alignment is important because it can lead to increased revenue growth, better customer experiences, and improved efficiency in both teams. It can also create a more cohesive organizational culture.

How can you align your sales and marketing teams?

To align your sales and marketing teams, consider defining common goals and metrics, establishing regular communication and collaboration, creating a shared understanding of the customer journey, and implementing shared technology tools such as a CRM system.

by Leah Messenger

Senior Content Marketing Manager

Leah is a Senior Content Marketing Manager with a passion for turning complex topics into engaging, educational content.