In the current environment, Legal Tech companies cannot rely on increased marketing ad spend to meet revenue goals. Budgets have tightened, and reduced churn is critical to profitable growth. If you face these challenges, improving alignment between sales and marketing is likely an untapped opportunity for increasing revenue and your sales pipeline.
Hubspot estimates that misalignment between marketing and sales costs more than $1 trillion annually in lost revenue. This happens when sales and marketing teams are not working towards the same goals and are not communicating effectively. Without collaboration, these teams can become competitive and work against each other's interests.
Misalignment is a two-way problem. Sale teams suffer from inefficient lead handoff, as fewer leads convert to sales, and many are not contacted at all. Marketing suffers when they don't have the sales data they need to target and nurture qualified leads, leading to wasted marketing spend and poor-quality leads. Lack of cooperation also means you are likely missing opportunities to upsell and reduce churn.
Common symptoms of misalignment include teams using different systems, competition for funding, and a lack of coordination or disagreement on priorities. Additionally, teams often have little understanding of the other's needs or responsibilities and no defined procedures at critical handoff points.
Sales and marketing alignment (SMA) occurs when both teams work together to accomplish shared initiatives. This is best achieved through consistent communication, shared data, and a common understanding of each team's priorities and responsibilities.
Optimal alignment requires changes to the overall business strategy so that both sales and marketing teams are measured by the same KPIs, ensuring that they are working towards the same goals and with the same vision. They should use the same collateral and implement strategic processes at critical touchpoints. Most importantly, both teams need to understand how they work together to achieve their goals and how to communicate effectively to inform each other.
You can further facilitate alignment through technology. Specifically, you need a unified CRM and marketing automation platform. A unified CRM will ensure everyone has access to the information they need about a prospect or a customer. The entire organization will also be working with a single source of truth. Marketing automation improves lead nurturing with precisely-timed communications and handoffs between teams while providing additional insights via lead scoring and attribution.
Done well, you can expect your teams to take the initiative toward working more cohesively. They will share resources and data, increasing productivity without added costs. Marketing will generate leads more efficiently, and sales will nurture and convert them more effectively. Over time, increased cooperation and data sharing will lead to optimized processes and playbooks. Most importantly, the customer experience will become streamlined and seamless, creating more happy customers.