Aligning Sales and Marketing Around the Customer

Integration is the key to alignment. That means integrating software, people, and processes.

If your marketing team is promising your customers a sports car but you sell pickup trucks, you can’t win in the long run no matter how well you sell. 

Setting expectations correctly is key to happy customers.

Happy customers put food on your table and give you warm referrals to other valuable connections in their network. 

A happy customer got exactly what they were expecting. Hopefully you even gave them a little extra value to show them you value the relationship.

So how can you bridge the perceived gap between your sales team and their marketing counterparts?

Leverage an integration to bring marketing onboard Salesforce

If you're a sales leader, you are used to working in Salesforce. Your marketing colleagues may not be.

The result is disconnected data and inefficient collaboration. Sales and marketing are supposed to be two sides of the same coin, but it can be easy to forget that and start pointing fingers when there is a lack of transparency between the two. 

Lucky for you, Salesforce has the capability to integrate with all of the top marketing automation apps, one of which your marketing team is probably already using. 

By integrating their platform with yours, you’ll gain access to all the key information about current marketing campaigns without ever having to leave Salesforce. Your marketing colleagues won't have to do any extra work to get that information to you.

It's a win-win.

The easiest way to accomplish this is to first get your own house in order. If your Salesforce system isn’t running like a well-oiled machine, take care of that first.

Once it is, it’ll be much easier to convince your marketing friends that they should integrate with it. 

Recommended Marketing App for Small Businesses: ActiveCampaign

For as low as $50 per user per month, you can gain access to the key capability you need to succeed in the world of email marketing: sophisticated segmentation. 

That means you’ll be able to target niche parts of your audience with specific campaigns. You can automate entire email chains with easy to use drag-and-drop tools. 

Plus, you'll be able to view campaign information directly from Lead and Contact records in Salesforce. 

Note that there is no-commitment monthly pricing available, as well as discounts for quarterly or annual subscriptions.

Recommended Best Marketing App for Mid-Size and Growing Businesses: Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) 

Personalize relationships. Drive demand. Work more efficiently with sales and service.

Customize journeys with easy-to-create assets. Build dynamic and personalized emails and landing pages with clicks, not code.

Alert sales when a prospect is most engaged. Give reps full visibility into prospect engagement and seamlessly pass along leads.

Connect your marketing tech stack. Easily segment based on engagement with your webinar, survey, and video apps.

Scale efforts with artificial intelligence. Take the guesswork out of lead and account scoring through data-driven insights.

Showcase impact on revenue. B2B Marketing Analytics Plus gives you predictive insights and connects your marketing back to ROI.

Get started with account-based marketing. Account-based scoring and ABM analytics help marketing and sales align on key accounts.

No matter your B2B marketing goals, Pardot or one of the apps that extends its capabilities has the solution. If you're looking for a B2C solution, check out Marketing Cloud instead.