Report Reveals the Secrets to Aligning Sales and Marketing Teams for High Performance

SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - February 03, 2016) - InsideView powers the world's business conversations. Today the company announced the results of a report on sales and marketing alignment based on a survey of nearly 1,000 sales and marketing leaders from across industries. The report, "Crack the Code of Sales and Marketing Alignment", uncovers key reasons why sales and marketing teams are not aligned and reveals best practices in alignment from high-performing companies.

According to the survey, more than one in four sales executives (27 percent) say they could do a better job in marketing than their marketing coworkers, while about the same fraction (26 percent) of marketers call their sales counterparts "a bunch of mavericks." Aligning these teams is a challenge in every company. The report found that high-performing companies tend to be well aligned through a set of key behaviors that directly address the top challenges reported by sales and marketing leaders.

The top challenges to sales and marketing alignment cited were "communication" (49 percent), followed by "flawed and broken processes" (43 percent), and "sales and marketing measured by different metrics" (40 percent).

Only one in five cited lack of sales and marketing technology as a challenge; however, both sales and marketing teams are looking to tools to increase prospecting success. Seventy-five percent of respondents identified "intelligence about prospects and customers" as the most important tool to drive successful prospecting, followed by data/lead enrichment (51 percent), then predictive intelligence (46 percent).

"There's no silver bullet to align sales and marketing," said Umberto Milletti, CEO of InsideView. "It takes hard work, commitment, and innovation on the part of both teams. It also takes support from the top. This report shows that dedication is worth it. Companies that align sales and marketing get results on the bottom line."

Best Practices in Alignment

To address these challenges, high-performing companies have adopted common behaviors that more tightly align sales and marketing. The report found patterns among the respondents who worked for companies that had exceeded revenue goals. The common behaviors of these high-performing companies include:

• Focus on lead quality. High-performing companies focus on lead quality, while lower-performing companies focus on quantity.
• Focus on pipeline. Sales and marketing executives at high-performing companies meet to discuss pipeline twice as frequently as their counterparts at lower-performing companies.
• Focus on data enrichment. High-performing companies place an increased priority on database quality and enrichment. One in four respondents from lower-performing companies said their "database is a mess".
• Communicate on metrics. Sales and marketing leaders at high-performing companies are five times more likely to work on lead scoring together.

The report goes on to recommend steps on how companies can put these (and other processes) into practice to achieve tighter sales and marketing alignment and better performance.