Marketing and Sales Alignment: A Strategic Approach for Technology Leaders

While we know there are benefits to aligning marketing and sales, it’s no longer merely beneficial; it’s necessary to drive new logo acquisition and overall organizational growth. Companies are three times more likely to outperform revenue targets if company goals are aligned.¹ This reinforces the importance of a unified strategy across the organization.

The Power of Demand Generation

Demand generation is a key area where sales and marketing alignment demonstrates its strength. Clients are increasing their investments in this area with the goal of achieving financial alignment and enhanced performance. Increased investment in demand generation reveals improved marketing efficiency. This ensures every marketing dollar spent contributes to measurable outcomes. Alexander Group recently conducted a survey on sales and marketing demand generation practices, and, on average, organizations cited investment of ~2% revenue in demand generation expenses.

Leveraging the Annual Planning Process

Incorporating demand generation into the annual planning process helps yield well-balanced investments resulting in increased efficiency. The annual planning process is when the entire organization is setting top-down and bottom-up goals for the year making it an opportune time to look horizontally across other functions in the organization to create great alignment both in goals and execution plans. Annual planning also allows for the development of collaborative goal setting, shared incentives and shared key performance indicators. While undergoing annual planning, it’s possible to align strategies and ensure these shared goals are prioritized and adequately resourced throughout the year. This provides a greater likelihood of successful execution. Further, incorporating these shared goals and strategies into enablement content and training talk tracks at the start of the year will drive mutual understanding across the organization.

Annual review of resources and investment compared to impact provides a high-level strategic look at how effective our investments were over the past year. Many organizations review these investments and budgets more frequently than annually. 80% of companies reported they assess overall marketing performance to inform investment levels at least monthly.¹

However, the work is not done once annual planning is complete. Once you have a mutually agreed upon plan, continuous feedback, regular check-ins, audits and other “maintenance” best practices are critical to maintain alignment and create lasting impact. 

Benefits of Aligning Sales and Marketing Teams

The benefits of sales and marketing alignment are extensive. A few examples of what you can expect to see from successful execution includes:

• Higher marketing qualified lead to sales-qualified lead conversation rates. Marketing and sales working towards the same goals result in higher quality leads and even lower cost per marketing-qualified lead compared to peers. 31% of organizations are increasing overall marketing qualification levels relative to demand generation levels. ¹
• When responsibilities and handoffs are clear across sales and marketing roles, companies experience greater resource efficiency. 45% of marketing organizations are deploying more functional contributions and sources to pipeline, enabling gains in cross-functional collaboration and accountability.¹
• High conversion rates and other related results increase sales funnel speed, multiplying the impact of the initial investment. 
• Organizations investing in demand generation and with aligned sales and marketing functions experience reduced customer acquisition cost. 
• Customers experience higher rates of satisfaction and companies experience increased customer retention as a result. 

Best Practices for Maintaining & Measuring Alignment 

1. Regular Reviews:

Pick a cadence and ensure consistent marketing performance evaluations. Select key metrics to monitor to identify trends (e.g., conversion rates).

2. Market Benchmarks & Best Practices:

Look externally – how is the industry investing and evolving? What are the latest market trends? How are buyer preferences changing? Are you keeping pace? Adjust accordingly.

3. Monitor Pipeline Health:

How robust is your pipeline? What is your pipeline velocity? What are your close and qualification rates at each stage of the funnel?

4. Measure Revenue from Demand Generation Activities:

Track revenue associated with specific marketing investments and campaigns to understand what investments are most effective and impactful and where to adjust investment levels in the future.

So, what are you waiting for? Now is the ideal time to embark on the journey towards aligning your marketing and sales teams. Considering this alignment during the annual planning process as a small step with great impact.

¹ Alexander Group Demand Generation Performance and Investment Study, 2023