Sales Alignment Helps Your Business Close More Deals and Grow Revenue Smarter

What is sales alignment?

Sales alignment is sales sharing. It’s all about communicating clearer, strategizing together, and setting goals. That way, all of your teams are on the same page and work towards a common, unified mission.

Sales alignment can help your business close more deals, build stronger marketing and messaging strategies, and grow revenue smarter. 

For many companies, communication across departments becomes siloed over time. This is especially true for sales and marketing departments, and it can lead to friction in the customer experience. Today, clear and open communication—and alignment—is essential for a healthy business. Customers have more choices than ever, and it takes time and money to engage prospects throughout the sales funnel. If there is friction in your sales process, prospects will feel it. Think about the last time you tried to purchase a product or invest in a service. If you hit a roadblock, did you keep trying, or choose to go somewhere else instead?

I know if I hit a snag or experience poor customer service, I’m looking elsewhere. If your leads experience the same, they’ll head off for the next company that treats them better. And in order to treat your customers better, you need to align your teams. 

Sales alignment takes otherwise segmented departments, like sales and marketing, and brings them together. Instead of just handing off a lead from marketing to sales, sales is part of marketing, just as marketing is part of sales.

The top 3 sales alignment best practices

1. Stay organized

If your sales and marketing teams aren’t organized, then your prospective customers, business partners, and active clients will feel it. Remember: when you're organized, your customers are happy. And because you have happy customers, you have happy employees. It’s a happy cycle! 

But if you’re struggling with organization, your customers will be frustrated. And when customers are frustrated, everyone is. That’s a vicious cycle that needs to be fixed!

Organize sales around buyer personas

Buyer personas, a semi-fictional representation of your target audience, communicate to marketers who they’re marketing to. But personas can be so much more than that. They can also communicate to your sales team who to sell to. It’s a perfect tool to determine best-fit customers and guide salespeople through the funnel! The buyer persona should be at the heart of your alignment initiatives. That way, no matter which department, employees understand that the buyer persona—the customer—is at the center of the process.

Organize as many resources as possible in one location 

Marketing and sales work hard to stay organized. But sometimes it’s easier said than done. That’s why you need to find a software solution that does most of the hard work for you. A single place that stores contacts, calendars, marketing materials, content, and data all for easy access. 

Enter HubSpot. This is the customer relationship management, or CRM, platform that gives you the tools you need to stay organized and keep customers engaged. It’s all in one place! Marketing, sales, services, and operation—all under one roof. The ultimate friction reduction solution for teams and customers.

Click here to read more about why HubSpot is the right choice for your business.

2. Stay on the same page

Communication is key. The best way for your sales and marketing teams to stay aligned is to stay connected.

Schedule routine meetings 

Onboard each new salesperson with marketing 

Share as much relevant information as you can with your new salesperson. This doesn't mean you overwhelm them and hope they figure it out. But it does mean gathering the necessary resources and marketing materials a new salesperson needs to do their job effectively. Use this time to understand where your new salesperson is coming from and how marketing will make their job easier. You want to set expectations for everyone involved right out of the gate. That way, everyone is on the same page.

Sales and marketing managers must align

It’s even more important for team leaders to stay connected than it is for their direct reports. If leadership is misaligned, then the entire company struggles. Don't let that happen! Schedule recurring meetings to discuss the key metrics that matter most to your company, as well as develop and refine bigger projects.

Get marketing more involved in the sales process 

A simple way to make this idea a reality is for marketers to shadow, take notes, and participate in sales calls. Your marketers get to see what sales feels like, understand more about the customer, and discover useful nuggets of marketable information for future use. Essentially, you enable your marketing team to sell as they market.

3. Build Trust

Set measurable goals together 

In the past, sales and marketing had different goals and different tools to measure their success. For example, sales may be focused on revenue while marketing’s all about traffic and engagement. 

Instead of focusing on separate goals to reach success, understand and build shared goals that give everyone a common path to success. Consider using key performance indicators, or KPIs, like conversion rates or lead value—values which both teams have a direct impact on. There are plenty more to choose from, but it does vary from company to company.

Bonus tip: don’t cherry-pick metrics you think are best, either. Pick the metrics that matter most to your customer’s success.

Be transparent 

Siloed departments are a recipe for problems. Transparency and teamwork are a recipe for success. Build an open line of communication between teams. We use Slack here at Sauce, but there are plenty of options out there. Try a few and see what works best for your team. Foster an open, transparent culture that prioritizes psychological safety. That means sharing KPIs and seeking constructive feedback from the entire team.

Be respectful

You build trust through reciprocity and respect. Essentially, you get what you give. Respect your team’s time, efforts, and work in all aspects of your company. This is the path to strong company culture, low turnover, and employee buy-in. 

This extends beyond your employees. Don’t waste your customer’s time either! There’s a lot of information out there for them to read, hear, and understand. Speak to their needs, offer a solution to their problem, and guide them along the way.

Set your teams up for success with Sauce Agency!

At Sauce Agency, we leverage HubSpot’s powerful CRM as our primary sales alignment software. It’s why we’re a Gold Certified Agency Partner! We work with businesses just like yours to align your sales with marketing so you can run entirely through HubSpot, connecting to everything your team needs when they need it. Simply put, it’s the path to closing more deals and growing smarter. Schedule a call with a certified Growth Guide today.