Hey , one of the craziest paradoxes we see in B2B marketing is that marketers get excited about hitting their lead quota while the sales team almost never hits their sales quota.  

This misalignment results in ineffective marketing campaigns that generate low-quality leads. And in the same vein, it breeds an infamous war between sales and marketing. Why? Simply because marketers would blame the sales team for not being able to close deals while the sales team would retort that the marketing team generates low-quality leads. 

In the face of this, there is an urgent need for modern B2B marketers to be revenue responsible and align with the sales team for better results.

But the problem is, not all companies have a good environment and culture for marketing & sales alignment. 

In this newsletter, we’ll share with you a step-by-step guide to aligning sales and marketing teams around your strategy and outputs instead of inputs.

Before we dive in, here are 13 signs of marketing & sales misalignment:

1. Lack of awareness in target accounts

2. Sales reject marketing leads

3. Marketing becomes an order-taker. The marketing function turns into a sales assistance function, executing tasks coming from sales and running lead-gen campaigns

4. Commodity positioning. Company/brand falls down into either commodity or "yet another spammy vendor" category

5. Dependence on cold outreach

6. Long sales cycles

7. Low win-rates

8. Leads are not sales-ready

9. Blaming games between marketing and sales

10. Low conversion MQL→SQO

11. Marketing collateral collects dust

12. Multiple versions of value prop. There are many versions of positioning and value proposition. Different salespeople come up with their own versions.

13. Miserable marketing- sourced pipeline

Now if any of these 13 symptoms apply to you, what do you have to do, ? Treat them? No. 

Instead, you should identify and fix the root causes. That includes:

1. A lack of customer research

2. Vague and broad ICP

3. Messaging and value prop that are not targeted, specific, and validated

4. Misaligned messaging in ads. Content on the website and landing pages set up wrong expectations for prospects and generates bad fit leads

5. Marketing and sales target different market segments, geo markets, or ICP

6. Marketing focuses on vanity metrics, and marketing campaigns don't support sales and don't drive revenue

7. Marketing doesn't provide sales with highly engaged target accounts

8. Marketing doesn't help sales accelerate deals

9. Lack of demand generation programs

10. Content is based on SEO, not on insight into the buyer journey and buyer's informational needs

11. Marketing doesn't know the sales process and the challenges the sales team faces

12. There are no regular pipeline reviews, campaign progress, and postmortem meetings

13. No clear playbooks for leads handoff and activation processes

Listen, dear , marketing and sales are two parts of a revenue team that have the same goal (revenue and business growth). But the thing is, different functions have different responsibilities. 

Ask any soccer player or fan about what function is more important: goalkeeper, defense, midfielder, or attack.

The answer will always be the same: they are all equally important although their responsibilities vary in a wide number of ways.

Here’s an overview of the primary goal of marketing teams:

• Customer research, messaging, and positioning
• Creating awareness
• Generating and capturing demand
• Supporting sales with engaged accounts and intent triggers
• Helping sales to accelerate the sales cycle and influence the decision-making process

An overview of the primary goal of the sales team:

• Connect and build relationships with target accounts
• Start conversations about a potential collaboration with engaged accounts
• Drive consensus and approval within the buying committee
• Expand the business with existing customers by expanding, upselling or cross-selling

These are the functions that lead to business and revenue growth.

5 things you need to align marketing and sales teams in a B2B Company 

1. Goals

What do you want to achieve: 

• Renew contracts? 
• Accelerate pipeline? 
• Go upmarket and win several enterprise clients?

Be clear because your marketing programs, metrics, and budget will depend on the goals you’ve set.

2. Metrics 

If your sales cycle is long, no marketing program will magically decrease it. Define leading indicators that will help you measure campaign performance and forecast revenue.

Here are some examples:

• ABM: # of connections with buying committee members
• Thought leadership: # of chats about your product, brand mentions, media invites
• Awareness campaign: # of views/clicks from target accounts

3. Focus segment

All segments have different needs, goals, and reasons to buy. But all segments are not created equal. Some of them might generate 10x-20x more revenue than others.

Your mission is to identify them and know where to concentrate your efforts and resources.

4. Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)

ICP for B2B companies consists of two parts: 

A. Ideal Account Description

Ideal Account Description is a list of firmographics, geo criteria (e.g. revenue, team size, location), and custom qualification criteria (e.g. PE-backed company, marketing team > 3 marketers) you’ll use for account list building.

 B. Buying Committee

There are 4 core roles inside the buying committee that usually influence the opportunity: 

• Champions who are in charge of the product/vendor research
• Decision-makers
• Influencers who do not take part in research or negotiations but evaluate vendors and provide feedback
• Blockers: these are the buying committee members who are not interested in your solution or might see a danger to themselves.

That said, you need to understand the typical goals, needs, and pain points of these 4 roles to tailor your vertical value proposition to them.

At the end of the day, you sell to people, not to "B2B organizations".

5. Marketing message and value prop for the buying committee

What are the benefits that your target accounts can get from your product? 

What makes it different from the competition? 

How can every buying committee member benefit from your product?

You can't just say "better price" or "better features", that’d be too easy.

The members of the buying committee care more about their own performance and KPI. Then your message should clearly articulate it.

Love this newsletter? Share it with a colleague or friend and earn some exclusive perks.

Upcoming community events

How to measure B2B marketing for companies with long sales cycles?

Join Andrei and Stapho Thienpont, our senior B2B marketing consultant, sharing:

• ​​The consolidated revenue report that demonstrates marketing impact on pipeline and revenue
• ​The core B2B marketing metrics
• ​How to measure different ABM campaigns
• ​How to measure B2B demand generation and intertwine it with the revenue report.

​SAVE YOUR SPOT NOW.

Best shares from Trenches Community

• Here is why B2B companies with a long sales cycle measure marketing like B2C (but you should NOT)
• Here are 2 problems with “alignment” 
• Here are 3 categories and 11 core metrics I recommend looking at for a B2B company with high ACV and a long sales cycle
• How to Create a Full-Funnel B2B Marketing Strategy for 2023

Questions from fellow Trenchers

Dear , your help is needed. If you can answer any of the questions below, please click on the link and share your ideas.

• Does anyone have an opinion on a good engagement rate benchmark for LinkedIn posts?
• Has anyone had experience as a Marketer turned CRO, or working with a MKT to CRO? From my perspective, it's been mostly sales leaders who follow this track. I'd love to chat with these folks to learn more about how to get from point A to point B.
• Anybody ever hired a country manager? Looking to see what the cost would be to hire a country manager in Europe (more specifically France and Germany)
• Hey guys. What offline marketing events do you plan to attend in 2023?

NOTE: If you found this content interesting and useful, chances are you have 1 or 2 colleagues (well, maybe 03) who'd enjoy it as much as you do. Help them by sharing this and earn some exclusive perks.

See you in Trenches 😉

Adechina ODJO