Peanut Butter and Chocolate: Sales and Marketing – Are You Aligned?
In business today, everyone is looking for an edge – the next big thing.
Sometimes, however, the answers are right in front of you. Take for example, sales and marketing. Does this sound familiar?
Sales Manager: “Marketing is not giving us the sales enablement tools we need.”
Marketing Manager: “Sales isn’t using the tools we create for them.”
Here’s the reality: for a company to succeed, sales and marketing have to work together. Don’t believe me? Take a look at your next paycheck. See the signature at the bottom? Great. Now, go ask your opposite peer in either sales or marketing whose signature is on theirs. It’s the same? Congratulations! You are part of what we call a team.
Remember the old Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups commercial? It went something like this:
Person One: “You got your peanut butter in my chocolate!”
Person Two: “You got your chocolate in my peanut butter!”
Gravelly-voiced narrator: “Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups: two great tastes that taste great together.”
Sales is the chocolate. Marketing is the peanut butter. Or it’s reversed. Take your pick.
Where am I going with this? It’s simple: when teams work in concert, great things happen. Sadly, though, it’s also true that a team is only as strong as its weakest link. So in order to help you circumvent that weak link, we’ve compiled some stats from Logan Henderson, our GM of Marketing Automation at Sugar. These should provide you with all the evidence you need to understand that closely intertwined sales and marketing organizations are the most successful. To wit:
- Organizations with tightly aligned sales and marketing functions enjoyed 36% higher customer retention rates. They also experienced 38% higher sales win rates. (MarketingProfs)
- 54% of companies with marketing automation capture intelligence for the sales team, compared to 25% without (The Lenskold and Pedowitz Groups)
- 67% of B2B marketers say lead nurturing increases sales opportunities throughout the funnel by at least 10%, with 15% seeing opportunities increase by 30% or more. (DemandGen)
- 69% of top performing companies cite “cooperation between marketing and sales” as the most critical value driver for maximizing marketing automation ROI. (Gleanster)
- Companies that have implemented a marketing automation platform report higher levels of collaboration between sales and marketing, such as a 13% collaboration advantage in defining and executing field programs, a 17% collaborative advantage in capturing insight from customers and prospects, and a 12% collaborative advantage in managing leads and lead pipelines (Forrester Research)
We hope you find these examples to be helpful to you and your organization. And of course, the common thread that helps sales and marketing tie it all together is CRM, which we know a thing or two about. If you are just dipping your toe in the CRM or CX (Customer Experience) waters, or are looking to take your company to the next level, we’re here to help! Contact us for a demo on any of our solutions – peanut butter, chocolate, or in the best scenario, both!
