Sales and marketing alignment is fast becoming one of the biggest focus areas for organisations so we’ve brought together the most interesting, latest statistics for you.
Whether you’re struggling to get buy-in to truly align your teams or you’re wondering how to overcome obstacles and what highly aligned teams do differently, we have the statistics to help! We grouped them into key areas too, so you can quickly find the statistics that matter most to you.
One thing is clear: sales and marketing alignment works when executed correctly and it’s not a passing trend.
The ROI Of Sales And Marketing Alignment
The evidence is clear: organisations where sales and marketing alignment are aligned reap the benefits in terms of revenue, closure rates and customer retention rates. The increases are significant too, so if your teams aren’t yet working effectively together it’s worth the effort.
1) Businesses with strong sales and marketing alignment:
- Are 67% more effective at closing deals
- Are 58% more effective at retaining customers
- Drive 208% more revenue as a result of their marketing efforts. Source: LinkedIn Research
2) An estimated $1 trillion dollars a year are lost due to a lack of sales and marketing coordination in the US alone. Source: LinkedIn Art of Winning Report
3) An effective partnership between sales and marketing is the #1 success factor attributed to achieving revenue goals. Source: Heinz Marketing - Performance Management Report
4) Companies see an average of 19% faster revenue growth and 15% profitability when sales and marketing teams are aligned.
Source: Demand Gen Report
Why Sales And Marketing Now Need To Work Together
The buying process has become much more complex than it was before. With so much more online content readily available and more decision makers in the process, the buying process no longer follows the traditional linear sales funnel - it’s much more fluid and can rapidly change.
It’s only when sales and marketing work effectively together that they can help make the process easier, not harder.
Buyers are more self-sufficient than ever and the number involved in each decision continues to rise, meaning buying groups are becoming larger and more complex.
6) The majority (73%) of B2B respondents now rely on more sources to research and evaluate purchases. Source: DemandGen 2019 B2B Buyers Report
7) 2% of B2B buyers wait until they have fully identified needs before speaking with a salesperson. 44.2% identify a solution first and 20.2% only prefer to lock down the details. Source: CSO Insights: The Growing Buyer-Seller Gap
8) 88% of B2B buyers find that the information they encounter during the buying process is high quality but 50% report feeling overwhelmed by the amount of trustworthy information they are faced with during their research. Source: Gartner for Sales, CSO Update: The new B2B buying journey and its implication for sales
9) In 84% of cases, the B2B buying group has someone who acts as a ‘champion’ for the winning vendor, which is the biggest influence in over half of cases (59%). Source: Gyro: “Group.MInd.Set: How Group Dynamics Impact B2B Decisions”
10) 83% of B2B buyers often speed up or put on hold purchase decisions due to changing business needs and/or priorities. Source: DemandGen 2019 B2B Buyers Report
11) The most important feeling that B2B buying groups want is to feel that a vendor understands their needs. However, culture, purpose and values have the biggest impact on B2B vendor selection (at 65%). Source: Gyro: “Group.Mind.Set: How Group Dynamics Impact B2B Decisions”
12) The jury is out on whether a vendor’s connections to the buyer’s C-Suite is important. 33% feel this is very important, while 35% see it as somewhat important and 32% feel it has no impact. Source: DemandGen 2019 B2B Buyers Report
The Obstacles To Alignment
The benefits of sales and marketing alignment is clear but there are a number of challenges that prevent the teams working together effectively. Communication problems are a common theme from the research, as well as a lack of alignment over metrics and how these are rewarded.
13) Less than 8% of sales managers believe that marketing organisations use revenue performance metrics effectively. Source: Heinz Marketing - Performance Management Report Research
14) Communication is the biggest challenge for achieving sales and marketing alignment according to 49% of 1000 sales and marketing professions, followed by broken and flawed processes (43%) and teams being measured by different metrics (40%). Source: Inside View & DemandGen: Cracking the code of sales and marketing alignment
15) LinkedIn research shows that only 20% of organisations report a lot of overlap on the data used to target leads. 59% reported “some overlap” and 21% reported little to no overlap. Source: LinkedIn State of Sales Report 2018
16) The most difficult challenge stated by those in organisations where sales and marketing were low-aligned were: having different internal incentives (48%), measuring results differently (48%) and not meeting often enough (45%). In highly aligned organisations, these challenges were cited less, at 5%, 31% and 16% respectively. Source: LinkedIn and CMI: Content Marketing: Unlocking Sales and Marketing Performance, 2018
17) The biggest variance between highly aligned sales and marketing teams and low aligned ones is not meeting enough. 45% of those not aligned cited this as a barrier, compared with just 16% in highly aligned organisations. Source: LinkedIn and CMI: Content Marketing: Unlocking Sales and Marketing Performance, 2018
The Tides Are Turning
The research is mixed on whether sales and marketing now feel truly aligned and working together effectively, but how they feel about each other doesn’t always correlate with the results.
18) Only 12% of sales executives believe that Marketing Qualified Leads are important. Source: LinkedIn Art of Winning Report, 2018
19) Less than 5% of sales and marketing executives now report poor alignment according to a and 84% of sales now speak of marketing in a positive light too, with 80% of marketing doing the same for sales. Source:LeadMD’s Sales and Marketing Alignment Survey Benchmarking & Insights Report, 2019
20) The proof is in the pudding: Over 60% of those reporting to be “Very Well Aligned” or “Well Aligned” showed negative performance and pipeline growth. Source:LeadMD’s Sales and Marketing Alignment Survey Benchmarking & Insights Report, 2019
Activities That Highly Aligned Sales And Marketing Teams Do
The organisations that have managed to align their sales and marketing teams do things differently. Sales and marketing collaborate on buyer personas and how to win key accounts, marketing teams visit customers too and sales understand how to use marketing content. And it’s not just talk: they hold each other to account.
21) In organisations where sales and marketing are not properly aligned, only 15% of companies collaborate on buyer personas. Contrast this with highly aligned companies, where 58% collaborate on buyer personas. Source: research by LinkedIn and CMI: Content Marketing: Unlocking Sales and Marketing Performance, 2018
22) In 52% of organisations that are “Leaders” in alignment (with the ROI to prove it), marketing carry out customer visits/calls at least once a quarter, compared with just 42% for “Laggards”. Source: LeadMD’s Sales and Marketing Alignment Survey Benchmarking & Insights Report, 2019
23) 79% of companies that see a positive ROI from account based marketing report good alignment between sales and marketing. Source: Engagio & Salesforce Pardot: 2019 ABM Market Research Report
24) 79% of marketers in highly aligned companies show their salespeople how and when to use the content, compared with 19% in companies with low alignment. Source: LinkedIn and CMI: Content Marketing: Unlocking Sales and Marketing Performance, 2018
25) Just 26% or organisations report being tightly aligned, with an SLA in place. Of these, 85% of believe they have an effective marketing strategy, compared with just 46% in rarely aligned companies. Source: Hubspot, State of Inbound 2018 Global Report
If you’re ready to make sales and marketing alignment work in your organisation, download our guide: