How to tell if sales & marketing are aligned in your company

Sales enablement and RevOps are hot topics in marketing/sales circles and it makes sense to check the pulse of your company’s ability to align the two around a common goal.

So, how can you tell if your Sales & Marketing are aligned? Ask each team one question:

“What is a qualified lead?”

Pose this question to your Sales Director AND your Marketing Director separately. Then compare their responses.

The Sales Director will most likely say that a qualified lead is someone who’s expressed clear interest in learning more about your product or service and has the authority to make a purchase decision.

The Marketing Director will most likely say a lead is qualified if they submit their contact info at a tradeshow or when downloading an e Book from your website.

Are you starting to see where the definition of a qualified lead causes problems?

The Sales Director will look at Marketing’s definition and conclude that marketing will pass along basically anybody that can fog a mirror as a qualified lead. And the Marketing Director will say sales is asking for too much data that they can’t possibly provide.

This is why you need a Sales Enablement Team

Sales Enablement combines sales and marketing team members into one unit – with a shared goal – so they can align their efforts for maximum impact.

First three steps to Sales Enablement

1. Create the team. Keep it small and don’t invite C-suite folks. You can rotate in different members from each team so that you can get full participation and everyone feels their voice is heard.
   
2. Develop some meeting ground rules, chief among them would be “no bitching, no personal attacks.” Keep the focus on solving problems and ensure there’s a sense of psychological safety and that nobody should fear reprisals or punishment for speaking their truth.
   
3. Start working on a lead scoring model that’s simple and easy-to-understand. What information about a lead do we need in order to consider it ‘qualified?’ Begin with that task. Take some time to really hash that out. Once you have a shared understanding of what a qualified lead is, you’re well on your way to building a sales enabled culture.