"Sales and marketing as separate islands? That's blocking your growth. Discover how an integrated revenue team halves your acquisition costs."
The gamechanger for B2B growth: Not letting sales and marketing work together hinders your growth! Read here how that works and what you can do about it. Sales and marketing are still seen as separate departments in many organizations. While marketing focuses on generating leads and brand awareness, sales is busy converting prospects to customers. This traditional model functioned for years, but in today's B2B market, this separation no longer works effectively. In fact, it hinders growth. How can sales and marketing work together better and thus set up a stronger commercial strategy?
The consequences of poor collaboration
In practice, the lack of synergy between sales and marketing leads to a waste of time, budget and potential. A common complaint from sales is that marketing provides insufficient qualified leads. On the other hand, marketing finds that sales doesn't do enough with the generated leads. This mutual misunderstanding results in missed opportunities and stagnation in growth.
Research by Bench Sights shows that the growth of SaaS companies has halved in two years, while the costs for customer acquisition have doubled. One of the main causes of this is the separation between sales and marketing. The current market demands an integrated approach, where both disciplines work together on common goals.
A revenue team
To be successful in today's B2B world, sales and marketing must work closely together. This starts with aligning strategies and sharing insights. How can this collaboration be effectively organized?
Joint buyer personas and market segmentation: A solid collaboration between sales and marketing starts with aligning the target group. By jointly creating buyer personas and defining market segments, both teams can better understand customer needs and align their efforts better. This ensures that marketing-oriented campaigns fit well with the customer's needs and sales can conduct targeted conversations with prospects that really fit the ideal profile.
Pro Tip
Stop broadcasting, start understanding. The sales experience accounts for over 50% of customer loyalty.
A clear definition of leads: A common problem within organizations is that marketing generates leads that do not match the needs of sales. To prevent this, it is crucial to jointly determine what a qualified lead is. This helps marketing to better align their campaigns with the target audience and ensures that sales receives leads that are actually convertible.
Lead nurturing for a long-term relationship: Following up on leads does not stop at the first contact. Lead nurturing is essential to move prospects through the sales funnel and keep them warm until they are ready to purchase. Marketing can offer targeted email campaigns, webinars or content that addresses the needs and pain points of the prospect. Sales can then further expand the relationship by establishing more personal contact, waiting for the right moment and adding value in every interaction. Thus, a lead grows from a cold contact to a warm prospect who is ready to convert.
The importance of a well-functioning CRM: Technology plays a crucial role in connecting sales and marketing. CRM systems and marketing automation tools ensure a seamless transfer of leads and make it possible to measure performance. By working with a shared platform, both teams gain insight into customer behavior and campaign performance, which leads to better decision-making. A well-designed CRM system allows marketing to analyze lead behavior, enabling them to set up more targeted campaigns. Sales benefits from this because they get a full overview of the interactions a lead has already had with the company. This means less <a href="/nl/wiki/cold-calling" class="text-[#4368b0] hover: text-[#ed6e1c] underline">cold calling</a> and more targeted conversations with prospects who have already shown interest. Moreover, a CRM can contribute to better lead scoring, allowing sales to focus on the most promising prospects. This not only increases efficiency but also improves conversion rates.
Joint use of customer data and feedback: In addition to using CRM for lead management, sales and marketing can strengthen their collaboration by jointly exchanging customer feedback and data. Sales often has valuable insights from conversations with prospects that can help marketing refine campaigns and content. Similarly, marketing can provide the team with data on customer behavior and preferences, so that sales can tailor the right pitch to specific prospect profiles. This makes the customer approach more personal and effective.
In short: a new framework for growth
To put this collaboration into practice, a clear framework is needed. In our video series ‘Scaling Up Marketing and Sales’, we show how sales and marketing can work together optimally to achieve growth.
Click here to gain access to the video series!
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