3 Common Issues in ABM Sales and Marketing Alignment

By Win Salyards, Marketing Coordinator at Heinz Marketing

Sales and marketing alignment is essential to any ABM strategy. It can make or break your ABM strategy. Only 3 in 10 sales and marketing professionals think their organizations are fully aligned. To ensure ABM success, we need to understand issues that can arise or are present when aligning sales and marketing teams. Here are three core issues to look out for:

Sales’ Buy-In

Only 36% of salespeople polled in a survey by Kingpin Comms believed their marketing counterparts were very effective at their jobs. Furthermore, most salespersons weren’t satisfied by the quality of leads and insights provided by marketing, and only 2 in 5 were satisfied with the quality of information marketing provided. How are sales teams supposed to buy into a push to align with little trust and satisfaction towards what marketing brings to the table? 

KPIs

Only 36% of sales and marketing teams have wholly joined KPIs. Ensuring correct data and valuable insights when aligning your sales and marketing teams requires joined KPIs and an understanding of them from key team members. You can’t know if you’re successful without clear KPIs between the teams.

What is “Qualified”

Only 50% of organizations have a shared definition of a qualified lead/account between sales and marketing. Make sure that each step and stage of the buyer’s journey through the funnel is defined and understood by all members of your sales and marketing teams. Define what counts as qualified and continuously work to close the distance between marketing qualified and sales qualified. When these are aligned, it builds trust in the leads being provided by marketing and understanding sales’ needs. 

Each of these problems is linked together in its solutions. Define the boundaries and definitions in the sales-marketing process and build trust and understanding between the two teams. If you can do those things, you’ll be well on your way to sales and marketing alignment success.