Navigating Sales-Marketing Alignment: Tackling Top 5 Challenges Head-On

1. Marketing-to-Sales Handoff

The marketing-to-sales handoff seems simple enough. A marketing-qualified lead (MQL) becomes a sales-qualified lead (SQL). The marketing team must ensure that their sales colleagues know about it. Done. And done!

What could go wrong? The answer is…a lot.

That's why a miserable 5-10% of leads reach a closed deal. And even worse, 5% of sales say that marketing sends them high quality leads.

For starters, the two teams have to agree on what SQL looks like! If a SQL reaches sales without meeting these criteria, the sales team confidently greets them with sales messages they aren't ready for.

That lead's scoping for exit signs from the moment they arrive.

The definition of an MQL or SQL is not vague. It's precise. But it's different within each company.

So, quick question. What would happen if you asked everyone to define an MQL and SQL right now? Would everyone have the same answer?

Afraid to find out?

Let's imagine for a moment you're confident here. This challenge is a two parter. And part two rears its ugly head—the mechanism for your handoff.

How do you perfect the handoff timing? Does your mechanism ensure the system notifies and prepares the rep to receive the SQL your team has worked so hard to nurture?

Tools like Marketing Hub and Sales Hub rule when facilitating this process. But the process only works insofar as you define it.

The marketing-to-sales handoff must be thought through and agreed upon by both teams to be successful. Working in the same system is an essential first step. But you can do more.

The Solution to Difficult Marketing to Sales Handoffs

Handoffs don't have to be great. They need to be perfect. Only perfection achieves consistent, reliable, and scalable results.

So, let's address this less-than-perfect handoff from marketing to sales head-on!

Have a meeting between your marketing operations and sales operations teams to agree on the complete parameters of your lifecycle stages.

Make sure your teams know they're not the problem. They're the solution!

Ask them what role the deal stage, lead score, buying committee makeup, and ICP tier play in the timing and manner of the handoff.

But realize handoffs can change from team to team, ICP tier to ICP tier, and product to product. Your goal is to get to a single definition and process. But you must give yourself the wiggle room—the permission—to accept these differences.

Next, pull some reports. See at what lifecycle stage sales became involved in winning opportunities objectively. Determine what has been most successful to date.

Finally, once everyone agrees on the terms of your lifecycle stages and when and how sales should be tapped to jump in, update your CRM, marketing automation platform, and other technology. These should accommodate your newly agreed-upon handoff guidelines.

Make sure your technology accurately reflects those stages. It should enable—not hinder—effective sales and marketing collaboration. And make sure you're also aligning sales and marketing strategies to represent a more unified team.

2. Disparate Systems

Hundreds—no thousands—of tools exist that allow sales and marketing teams to run the individual motions of their day-to-day.

But what's the result? A list of tech tools the size of a Cheesecake Factory menu for your marketing operations team to deal with. They don't talk to each other. This one's saying one thing, and that one...well, you try not to think about how different they are.

For marketing and sales activities – especially those that require a handoff – data accuracy is everything.

And let's get honest here. The more tools you have, the lower the chances your data is reliable.

It's like your marketing and sales teams are trying to keep time with two watches that aren't synchronized. They'll be arguing who's got the right time.

It happens so innocently. You invest in technology only to identify its weaknesses. You need something else, so you keep "tech stacking" until you have the Leaning Tower of Pisa. But you've already spent that money, so it's hard to move on.

Your tech becomes a weight around your neck rather than the revenue driver it's supposed to be. But the longer you stay stuck in the place the harder it is to step out of this nightmare.

To make matters worse, C-suites breathing down your neck to show ROI on tech money you've already spent. Now, you're afraid the only way to show it is to buy more tech.

Here's why you must escape this trap to move forward.

• Too much context-switching. Different tools use slightly different parameters. The output is different because one is using centimeters while the other uses a yardstick.
• You don't know if every tool has all the information.
• Systems that should sync aren't leading to gaps you don't always know about.
• No single source of truth for decision-making about the success or failure of your efforts
• Misaligned handoff and scoring criteria lead to inconsistent buyer experience, lackluster business results, and frustration among team members.

The Solution for Disparate Systems

Disparate systems can be one of the more complicated problems to solve. Organizations may have multiple internal stakeholders and decision-makers involved. Each has their own favorites and pet projects.

But despite the challenges, there is a clear way forward.

There is no aligning sales and marketing strategies until we get everyone on the same page.

First, you can look at the feasibility of moving all of your marketing and sales operations into a single tool like HubSpot. Here, Marketing Hub and Sales Hub can accommodate all the marketing and sales alignment needs.

This unified system maximizes sales and marketing collaboration by centralizing communication. And we start to act like one team playing two roles to meet the same goal—driving revenues.

They provide a seamless experience for your customers and team.

And once you clarify your definitions and workflow, this new unified system streamlines and automates everyday activities, empowering teams to do more, better with less effort.

But let's face it. Combining systems isn't always an option. What then?

Here's the next best thing. Identify the gaps! Do your best to fill them.

That starts with an audit. Find out where information is being stored. Discover where systems aren't collecting, syncing, and updating data between them.

These gaps impact things like lead scoring and lifecycle stage updates. And they're crucial to keeping sales and marketing aligned. You can't afford to address this.

Chances are your reports have holes. You're working off inaccurate, incomplete, and often outdated information.

Next, perform a capabilities assessment of your current systems. Your goal? To ensure that they can achieve all of your goals.

Can your systems trigger actions in one another to ensure sales and marketing stay on the same page? If not, check outside your tools' native functionality using platforms like Zapier or Workato.

Complete the Growth Gap Analyzer to Identify Marketing Improvement Areas (diazcooper.com)

3. Inconsistent Data

Too many tools weaken already struggling processes. But a lack of operational leadership amplifies the chaos. Data suffers.

The teams trying to use that data quickly realize they're flying blind and begin to think in terms of "let's see what works" vs. "let's follow the data's lead."

Customers feel it!

Insufficient data doesn't just lead to bad calls because you can't properly forecast your sales team's pipeline. It means that you don't personalize campaigns. You get the handoff wrong. You place people into the wrong segmented cohorts. And we over or under-touch our prospect accounts.

The customer may perceive this as clumsy to downright infuriating. It's like that time the place where you get your oil changes sent you a discount on an oil change right after you came in.

Except so much more is at stake with massive B2B accounts.

Bottom line: data drives revenue engines. Everyone in your revenue operations needs data to drive customer interaction decisions. That includes marketing leaders and implementers, sales managers and reps, and customer success teams, everyone.

The Solution to Inconsistent Data

Now, for some good news. Often, solving the issue of disparate systems will also solve your data problems. But when they don't know that you do have other solutions.

If you are not getting the data you need for sales and marketing to align and make insightful, helpful decisions, you're left with one possibility. And you're not going to like it.

Your own data collection processes might be in the way!

So, let's start thinking about this process. Interview your team. Ask them outright, "what obstacles are preventing you from adding data?"

Do you have the most commonly populated properties in the left-side views of the correct records, broken down into sections? If not, then note this down as something you can improve.

Next, let's look at where you're not using automation, but could. This both tightens up processes and delivers clearer data.

For example, can you use automation to create records or move them from stage to stage of a pipeline to ensure that the data surrounding those activities stay accurate? What about duplicating or updating properties using workflows to reduce manual entry? These two types of automation alone can transform how a team works and the valuable data they can collect.

Finally, ensure that all your systems share data regularly and automatically. This will make sure everyone, and every automation, has the right data at the right time.

It's only the right data if systems are delivering the same data results. And, of course, condensing your tech stack will help keep data consistent.

If you feel at a loss on how you do this, you'll want to explore our Services (diazcooper.com).

4. Misaligned Goals & the Battle Over MQLs

All marketers are familiar with this play. Gate content to capture an MQL. Then send it to a sales/business development rep (SDR or BDR, respectively).

That SDR/BDR then prospects in concert with marketing to move this person into the coveted SQL lifecycle stage. Once the lead becomes an SQL, the account executive takes over and closes the deal, won or lost.

This play seems fair enough on its face. Thousands of marketers used it hundreds of thousands of times. But if we're talking about alignment, this play relies on a process laden with potential land mines.

Think about it. If the marketing team has a goal to drive MQLs and they are assessed based on their ability to meet that goal, their sole focus will be on how to get as many gated content downloads as possible.

Of course, they are.

But what's the issue with that?

Well, it turns out that the audience most likely to read your content is not necessarily the audience that wants to buy your product now. If they're still downloading eBooks and Whitepapers, they are too early in the buyer's journey.

But off they go, and marketing can pat themselves on the back for a well-done job.

Then we get to sales. Company friction is baked into the system if sales are judged by the number of MQLs they convert to opportunities.

Sales feel marketing isn't sending them qualified leads. Marketing feels sales is letting perfectly good leads slip through their fingers.

The teams don't have the same goals. They are out of alignment.

Until marketing takes responsibility for generating revenues and demand, the struggle continues. This leaves them ill-prepared to run ABM campaigns or provide a seamless customer experience.

The Solution to the MQL Battle

Marketing cannot exist in a vacuum. Reach out to your sales counterparts. Talk about how you can set up processes, regular stand-ups, and other means of listening to and learning from each other.

Sales can teach marketing a lot. Sales focus on the result, closing a deal. Generally speaking, they have clearly defined and data-driven methods to do this.

But for the system to work, they need quality, not quantity. It is marketing's job to help them focus on leads ready to buy now through the lead qualification process.

This isn't about blame or shame. It's about getting answers that move us forward.

Ask them:

• What happens on calls with MQLs? Listen to them for yourself to find out!
• What objections does the sales team run into over and over? This reveals gaps where sales enablement content is needed. According to Forrester, 65% of content created by marketing for sales goes unused. This ensures your creating the right content.
• Which content assets do people make mention of in calls? Celebrate your wins. These are probably what you need more of.

You can use what you learn to hone your ability to deliver qualified leads. But learning is rarely a one-way street. Sales can learn from their colleagues on the marketing side of the house.

Sales can ask you:

• What content is marketing serving and why?
• How have you altered the targeting
• What content is consumed most in deals that result in "closed-won" outcomes?

Sales can compare this to how sales see it play out in sales calls. They can make sure that messaging is consistent as leads move from marketing to sales.

The next step is to strengthen this avenue between sales and marketing. Don't only seek to understand. Agree on definitions, strategies, and processes.

Once sales and marketing understand one another more, they can make informed choices that help both teams win.

This opens up new conversations about important choices that can significantly impact the pipeline, such as:

• Should we focus on capturing MQLs or ungate content to drive demand?
• Should we define an MQL differently than we currently do?
• How can we support asynchronous buying and get prospects to SQL or sales-qualified opportunity (SQO) status before getting sales involved?

This is a much more productive line of questioning than "Why did you send me so many junk leads this month?"

5. Running Successful ABM Plays 

You've been wondering what the final sales-marketing alignment challenge is. Here it is. Running successful ABM plays with misaligned teams. At the end of the day, you just can't do it!

All of the problem areas outlined above block your every move—poor handoffs, disparate systems, inconsistent data, and arm wrestling over MQLs.

They prevent an organization from running successful ABM plays, especially at scale.

Ask yourself. Why is knocking your ABM goals out of the park so hard? Sales and marketing aren't talking.

ABM requires that you're not only aligned on one single MQL or SQL definition. You have to define an entire buying committee. This means even more handoffs, system, data, and goal alignment.

The Solution to ABM Alignment Issues

If you are a HubSpot user, you likely know that you have a plethora of HubSpot tools to use for your ABM plays:

• Target Account property
• ICP Tier property
• Account Overview
• Suggested Target Account AI tool
• Prospects tool to see accounts who have visited your website
• ABM and Target Account dashboards
• Company scoring
• Buying role properties
• Workflow automation
• Chatbot or live chat
• Automated lead rotation
• Ads conversion events

It's one thing to know these tools exist. It's another to know how to get the most out of them. Here's a good place to start.

1. Verify that you have been collecting job titles and buying roles. If you have not, go back through your last quarter of closed deals and manually enter this information or update via workflows. For example, you can make sure to indicate that a certain job title is always a decision-maker.
2. Create a dashboard to understand the buying roles involved in your recent deals and who usually shows up at the buying table first.
3. Have a meeting between sales and marketing to review this information and agree upon the buying committee and who to prioritize.
4. Follow the other solutions outlined above to ensure that your teams are aligned on goals, lifecycle stage definitions, and handoff protocol and that your data is clean and your systems are talking.
5. Finally, use your Target Account and ABM tools to set up a campaign to support the alignment built between sales and marketing.

Overcome B2B Marketing and Sales Alignment Challenges Now

Who says that sales and marketing can't play well together? More often than not, alignment is within reach. It just takes a little learning and listening, followed by consistent action, to achieve.

Address the clunky handoffs by making sure marketing and sales share definitions. Escape disparate systems to clean up your data so you always know the source of truth. With one source, marketing and sales can communicate and collaborate. They're working from the same playbook.

Stop us vs. them by aligning marketing and sales goals and learning how you can succeed together. Do all of the above to successfully run ABM plays for the win.

Still struggling to overcome these team alignment challenges and looking for results, not more smart-sounding promises.

Diaz & Cooper is the only HubSpot Platinum Solutions Partner specializing in transportation, aviation, and biotech. We've partnered with HubSpot since 2016. Our team of experts has achieved over 120 certifications collectively, and we're prepared to put that experience to work for you.