Signs Your Sales and Marketing Teams Are Misaligned

Recognizing the Rift: Signs Your Sales and Marketing Teams Are Misaligned

For B2B companies, marketing and sales alignment is crucial. Unalignment confuses, causes missed opportunities and, worst of all, lost revenue. Misalignment between sales and marketing teams can cost companies as much as 10% of annual revenue. It’s even estimated that the U.S. economy loses close to $1 trillion annually due to decreased sales productivity and wasted marketing efforts. Aligning your sales and marketing lets you avoid this waste and increase the amount of deals you close.

One obvious benefit to getting your sales and marketing on the same page is improved revenue growth. B2B organizations with aligned teams achieve 208% higher marketing revenue. They also can achieve a 34% increase in revenue. Most of this stems from having a more efficient process and better lead management.

When sales and marketing are aligned, marketing efforts are more likely to be focused on activities with proven impact. This helps optimize marketing spend and improves ROI. The feedback loop from sales to marketing can help refine marketing strategies and tactics based on real sales insights. It also helps improve lead management. When these teams are aligned, it reduces time spent on unqualified leads. Since sales and marketing work together to define what qualifies as a ready-to-convert lead, it ensures that only high-quality leads are passed from marketing to sales.

Misalignment also leads to duplicated effort and wasted resources. With different metrics of success, communication falters, and each department may not fully understand the other’s challenges and needs. This prevents the development of a unified strategy that leverages the strengths of both sales and marketing. It also creates an overall worse customer experience. When these teams are aligned, they present a unified front to customers. This makes for a seamless experience from the first marketing touch to the final sales interaction. This consistency is key to building trust and credibility.

With significant downsides and substantial upsides, B2B organizations must be able to recognize when their sales and marketing teams are misaligned and how to fix the problem. These are some of the key signs that you have a problem with sales and marketing alignment.