Examining the relationship between B2B sales and marketing in the era of ABM

Aligning sales and marketing in the time of ABM

With the rise of ABM, more businesses are talking about sales and marketing alignment than ever, yet, new research finds that only 3 in 10 organizations feel that their sales and marketing departments are completely aligned.

Alignment is a key objective for the majority of B2B tech businesses, with many already claiming to have achieved it. But how do these goals and claims marry up to reality?

Kingpin Communication's research aims to provide answers to this and to improve our understanding of how much the definition of alignment varies across the industry. To do this, Kingpin Communication surveyed 209 senior sales and marketing professionals working in organizations offering technology services in the EMEA and US.

Here are four sneak-peak insights from the research:

• 55% of sales professionals rely on insights provided by marketing to prioritise leads, but just 2 in 5 sales professionals are satisfied with the quality of those insights or guidance.
• 52% of marketing professionals believe their sales colleagues are very effective at their job while just 36% in sales think the same for those in marketing.  
• 39% of marketers think they could do the job of sales very easily.
• 38% of organizations consider sales most senior at board level vs 27% of organizations consider marketing to be most senior. Meanwhile, both sales and marketing consider themselves most senior.