Why Alignment Between Sales & Marketing Important For Data

Don’t you think that sales and marketing teams need a relationship therapy? Quite obviously, Marketing has a different perspective towards data and sales has a different one. Marketing teams feel that their leads are qualified but sales will never trust them and it is all never ending

Sales and marketing must find common ground in order to align around conversion goals, lead qualification, etc.

Let’s have a look at data categories which are close to sales & marketing:

1. Firmographic data –

It’s the marketing land, for determining lead scoring, segmentation, etc. Sales rely on marketing to make decisions based on the firmographic data. According to the Demand Gen Report, 68% of Marketers have the goal of targeting more specific segments for better engagement in 2019.

Both sales and marketing must be on the same page while they are creating the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), as different companies will have different ICP’s depending on the solutions they are offering. Marketers are in love with location data as they can use it for better-targeted email campaigns, strategic emails considering the timing. By using a combination of multiple data points, you can speak more specifically to the value your solutions provide to individual prospects at scale.

1. Job Function & Job Titles -

Here is where sales are invested! Many sales people assume that knowing job titles is good enough to determine whether their solution is applicable.

Titles are not enough for sales they need job functions. For e.g.: Titles aren’t standardized. One company’s “Digital Marketing Specialist” is another company’s “Web Manager” — which might be split into multiple functions at yet another company.

Titles aren’t the same across all the organizations. For example, a company like Oracle will have hundreds of VP how will you understand which amongst the hundreds in your target fit? If your prospect is a landmark on a map, a job title is the city it sits in and job function is the whole address. You can try to make educated guesses or you can follow a map straight to what they care about.

1. Organizational Charts –

Marketing professionals might not be keen on having information about the org charts, but sales professionals love them because it offers them multiple entry points to reach accounts.

Accurate org charts are a goldmine for B2B sellers because they display relationships between stakeholders, reporting structure, and job titles. Most strategic sales professionals use org charts throughout their buying cycle, leveraging the org charts is a must for shortening sales cycles and increasing win rates.

1. Technographic Data Intelligence -

Both sales and marketing professionals can leverage technographic data intelligence for competitive intelligence, you can increase your win rate by 200% if you are aware of the technology stack about the prospect and it’s especially helpful when your target accounts happen to be using one of your competitors.

While sales and marketing might rank data points differently, one thing is clear: More data on your prospects is always better. More data allows not only each team to their respective job better, but also to align and work together to close more deals.

Note: The Original content published here.