.svg)
Book the right meetings faster with one-click scheduling
.svg)
Engage website visitors with automated Journeys and live chat
.svg)
Qualify, route, and schedule prospects directly from your web form
.svg)
Route records in Salesforce based on a Trigger
.svg)
Route and schedule prospects from bizdev to sales to implementation
.png)
How aligned are the sales and marketing teams at your org?
“Meh” is how 44% of attendees answered that question during a recent webinar.
Tara Robertson and James Fletcher, Founder of Marketo Consultancy JTF Marketing, dove deep into sales-marketing alignment. Here's the full recording:
Spoiler: It’s still a big problem at most organizations.
Let’s get into some strategies to combat it.
Sales-marketing alignment means sales and marketing are working towards common objectives and not pitted against each other.
Sales understands the impact of marketing initiatives on their efforts, and vice versa.
Metrics are transparent and aligned across all GTM functions and individuals feel empowered to voice concerns when strategies aren't yielding the results they need for their team.
When aligning sales and marketing, Fletcher stresses the importance of creating clear definitions — particularly regarding how to categorize leads. Establishing what constitutes a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) eliminates the endless debate surrounding lead quality and ensures that efforts are focused on generating high-quality leads that drive revenue.
Hot Take: At Chili Piper we actually don’t even use the terms MQL or SQL (check out our blog on this here) — we align everything around a QHM (qualified held meeting). That way both marketing and sales are working towards having demos held with qualified prospects, rather than just passing over leads.
The pitfalls of having these functions siloed is overwhelming: disagreements over lead attribution, divergent strategies, and wasted resources all cause misalignment across orgs.
Fletcher breaks down: When teams operate in silos, we end up with different strategies, each heading in their own direction without meeting in the middle. The key is to foster internal consistency across departments, viewing everyone as part of the greater revenue team, not just sales + marketing.
But be careful because tech can sometimes amplify these challenges, and this can lead to arguments around lead attribution. The goal is to adopt common metrics, and use tech to facilitate rather than dominate discussions.
At Chili Piper, we focus a lot of our marketing efforts on building our brand and top of the funnel. It's marketing’s job to make it as easy as possible for your prospects to raise their hand for help when they are ready to move forward (by using Form Concierge 😉).
One of the fastest ways for marketing to ruin their relationship with sales is to send over tons of unqualified leads and then get frustrated with them for not making sales and converting them.
So, how can organizations bridge the gap between sales and marketing and unite them under a common goal? By ensuring you’re aligning team metrics with overall business objectives.
AKA focusing on revenue, pipeline generation, and time to conversion. And NOT focusing on vanity metrics (such as leads generated).
Transparency and open communication will always be a recurring theme in achieving alignment because this will go a long way to building trust across your company. How to get this?
This is essential, particularly in remote work, where spontaneous interactions can be limited.
Giving marketers access to demos, follow-up meetings, and onboarding calls helps marketers understand what’s resonating with prospects/customers (and what’s not).
For those of you who are still grappling with how to kickstart this alignment process, here’s some practical advice:
If you’re looking to start setting marketing goals that are in tandem with your sales team, check out our benchmark report on demo form conversion rates for a peek at the marketing KPIs we recommend focusing on.
And in the meantime, stay spicy. 🌶️
How aligned are the sales and marketing teams at your org?
“Meh” is how 44% of attendees answered that question during a recent webinar.
Tara Robertson and James Fletcher, Founder of Marketo Consultancy JTF Marketing, dove deep into sales-marketing alignment. Here's the full recording:
Spoiler: It’s still a big problem at most organizations.
Let’s get into some strategies to combat it.
Sales-marketing alignment means sales and marketing are working towards common objectives and not pitted against each other.
Sales understands the impact of marketing initiatives on their efforts, and vice versa.
Metrics are transparent and aligned across all GTM functions and individuals feel empowered to voice concerns when strategies aren't yielding the results they need for their team.
When aligning sales and marketing, Fletcher stresses the importance of creating clear definitions — particularly regarding how to categorize leads. Establishing what constitutes a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) eliminates the endless debate surrounding lead quality and ensures that efforts are focused on generating high-quality leads that drive revenue.
Hot Take: At Chili Piper we actually don’t even use the terms MQL or SQL (check out our blog on this here) — we align everything around a QHM (qualified held meeting). That way both marketing and sales are working towards having demos held with qualified prospects, rather than just passing over leads.
The pitfalls of having these functions siloed is overwhelming: disagreements over lead attribution, divergent strategies, and wasted resources all cause misalignment across orgs.
Fletcher breaks down: When teams operate in silos, we end up with different strategies, each heading in their own direction without meeting in the middle. The key is to foster internal consistency across departments, viewing everyone as part of the greater revenue team, not just sales + marketing.
But be careful because tech can sometimes amplify these challenges, and this can lead to arguments around lead attribution. The goal is to adopt common metrics, and use tech to facilitate rather than dominate discussions.
At Chili Piper, we focus a lot of our marketing efforts on building our brand and top of the funnel. It's marketing’s job to make it as easy as possible for your prospects to raise their hand for help when they are ready to move forward (by using Form Concierge 😉).
One of the fastest ways for marketing to ruin their relationship with sales is to send over tons of unqualified leads and then get frustrated with them for not making sales and converting them.
So, how can organizations bridge the gap between sales and marketing and unite them under a common goal? By ensuring you’re aligning team metrics with overall business objectives.
AKA focusing on revenue, pipeline generation, and time to conversion. And NOT focusing on vanity metrics (such as leads generated).
Transparency and open communication will always be a recurring theme in achieving alignment because this will go a long way to building trust across your company. How to get this?
This is essential, particularly in remote work, where spontaneous interactions can be limited.
Giving marketers access to demos, follow-up meetings, and onboarding calls helps marketers understand what’s resonating with prospects/customers (and what’s not).
For those of you who are still grappling with how to kickstart this alignment process, here’s some practical advice:
If you’re looking to start setting marketing goals that are in tandem with your sales team, check out our benchmark report on demo form conversion rates for a peek at the marketing KPIs we recommend focusing on.
And in the meantime, stay spicy. 🌶️
Jenn Castillo is a Sr. Channel Partnerships Manager at Chili Piper. She began her career in sales, then marketing, now partnerships - which is where her passion lies. She loves understanding the goals and values of other organizations and strategizing about how partners can create initiatives to be mutually beneficial. Whenever she's not geeking out about all things partnerships you can find her hanging out with her two dogs, Scout and River.
.svg)
