Sales & Marketing Alignment Stats for 2021

There is no “I” in team, as they say. And this saying rings true no matter what kind of a team you’re a part of.

And when you’re a part of a business, teamwork and alignment is crucial for achieving certain goals. If your sales and marketing teams have two different sets of goals that never intersect, then you’ll likely experience several issues on your path to increasing sales.

To make your sales funnel as smooth as possible, considering investing time, money, and effort into sales and marketing alignment.

What Is Sales & Marketing Alignment?

Sales and marketing alignment is simply the act of the sales and marketing teams working together toward a common goal.

Sales and marketing goal alignment helps a B2B business thrive. It helps improve collaboration, communication, efficiency, and transparency. The ultimate goal for this alignment is to improve the number of sales and highly qualified leads being generated.

Having these two teams aligned is a huge advantage for companies, especially for those investing heavily in marketing.

Sales and Marketing Alignment Stats to Know for 2021

Want to know more about the benefit of sales and marketing alignment? Check out these 10 stats to help persuade you:

• Businesses with aligned marketing and sales teams are up to 67% more efficient at closing deals. (Review 42, 2021)
  
  
• According to 87% of sales and marketing leaders, collaboration between sales and marketing teams enables growth for their business. (LinkedIn, 2020)
  
  
• 62% of marketers say they’ve noted a measurable positive impact since adopting account-based marketing (ABM). (Forrester, 2019)
  
  
• Total sales is the most common measurement of success for marketing programs. (HubSpot, 2020)
  
  
• Well-aligned sales and marketing teams drive more than 200% revenue growth from marketing tactics. (Invoca, 2021)
  
  
• 95% of shoppers prefer companies that provide them with relevant content through every step of the buyer’s journey. (Review 42, 2021)
  
  
• An estimated $1 trillion in revenue is lost yearly due to lack of sales and marketing alignment. (LinkedIn, 2018)
  
  
• 80% of marketers believe that ABM improves customer value, with another 86% saying it improves win rates. (TOPO, 2019)
  
  
• Roughly 50% of a sales team’s time is spent on low-quality prospects. (Ledgeview Partners, 2020)
  
  
• Less than 25% of sales emails are opened. (HubSpot, 2021)
  
  

How to Align Sales & Marketing

With a better understanding of the importance of sales and marketing alignment, you’re probably wondering where to start.

Luckily, there are some B2B sales and marketing alignment best practices that you can follow to immediately begin improving your team’s coordination:

• Agree on a buyer persona
• Track KPIs together
• Create marketing content with sales’ input
  
  

Agree on a Buyer Persona

Your alignment is certain to fail if both teams don’t have the same target audience in mind. To make this simple, have your sales and marketing team work together to create a buyer persona.

A buyer persona is one of the best sales and marketing alignment tools available to you, and creates an easy-to-navigate roadmap for the rest of your campaign.

Track KPIs Together

Once your marketing and sales teams are aligned, a win for one is a win for both. Therefore, set some KPIs that are relevant and measurable for both teams.

These KPIs don’t all have to be the same for both teams, but should all work toward a common goal. For example, “deals closed” could be a KPI for the sales team, while “lead quality” could be a KPI for the marketing team. The two KPIs are different, but work together to reach the same goal.

Create Marketing Assets

Content marketing is one of the most effective B2B marketing strategies. The majority of marketers nowadays use content marketing for every stage of the buyer’s journey and sales funnel.

One of the biggest perks of content marketing is it allows you to provide your readers with valuable assets in exchange for contact information. With proper coordination, the sales and marketing team can work together to decide what those assets will be, and what the goal is for each asset.

Aligning for Success

Hopefully these sales and marketing alignment stats have motivated you to work on improving your team’s collaboration and communication. After all, this is one of the most crucial factors in successful inbound marketing campaigns.

To learn more about launching your inbound marketing campaign, try this free resource: your very own Inbound Marketing Campaign Checklist.