What does sales and marketing alignment really mean within an organisation?
In May 2012 Eloqua commissioned YouGov to conduct an online survey to B2B marketers in the UK and Germany. We receive 252 responses from companies and in the UK and 255 responses from similar types of marketers in Germany. We discovered that the level of sales and marketing alignment we assume in the marketing automation world world doesn’t always translate to all marketers.
When asked the question, the vast majority of marketers in both countries considered their sales and marketing well or tightly aligned. However, when asked about a couple of simple indicators like email and CRM system integration (73% of UK marketers said they did not) and having a lead scoring programme in place (75% of UK marketers said they did not) alignment their responses were negative.
Alignment may mean different things to different people but to get true alignment between these two departments means agreeing a common framework of conversion and service level agreements along the funnel – as you’d need to do to set up a lead scoring programme. Having such an understanding would truly accelerate sales and marketing ‘alignment’ as well as pipeline development and ultimately help a company grow sales revenue.
For more information about the importance of sales and marketing alignment try reading Aberdeen Group’s latest report on revenue performance management.
