A Marketing Automation Guide to Sales and Marketing Alignment
This is the fifth in the series of ActiveConversion’s very popular “eHow To” guides. This one deals with aligning a company’s marketing and sales departments so that they can work together seamlessly.
From the guide:
B2B marketing is about driving sales, yet a common complaint from the sales department is that “Marketing throws leads over the fence!” Too often experience has shown sales that few leads from marketing are qualified and even if they are; the timing is too early in the cycle. Meanwhile the marketing department is constantly dismayed that so few leads are actually followed up by the sales department.
According to the 2008 Miller Heiman Sales Best Practices Study, only 37% of respondents agreed that their sales and marketing organizations are aligned in what their customers want and need [source]. Since sales teams want to prioritize on the buyers that have a better chance of closing, it makes sense to use to:
- give marketing more of a role in the targeting and qualifying of prospects
- use marketing automation to nurture prospects that are not yet qualified for hand-off to sales
- give marketing the ability to auto-communicate to sales a lead’s activities and engagement level
- prioritize for sales a large volume of leads based on qualifiers like company size and engagement
To download this eHow To Guide on why marketing automation can get your Sales and Marketing teams aligned, click here or on the image!
