Misalignment Still Fractures B2B Pipelines and Throttles Growth

Working Hand in Hand Is Critical for Growth

Misalignment in B2B, especially between sales and marketing has been a hot topic for some time now. We know alignment is a good thing because, not only does it make common sense, we’ve also seen the astonishing statistics that back it up, such as: 

• Highly aligned organisations saw a 32% year-over-year revenue growth. Less aligned organisations saw a 7% decrease in revenue (Source: Aberdeen).

• Highly aligned companies are 15% more profitable (Source: Forrester).

• Businesses with strong sales and marketing alignment are 67% more effective at closing deals and 58% better at retaining customers (Source: LinkedIn).

Do Marketing & Sales Alignment Strategies Work?

Spoiler alert! No. 

Mindful of the costs of misalignment, as well as the shiny upside of alignment, many B2B companies have deployed strategies to address their disconnects and foster a culture of collaboration, notably by:

• Working on everything together, from customer pain points, to personas, messaging and more

• Focussing on consistency, in order to amplify the right messaging throughout the funnel 

• Holding regular meetings with feedback loops help both teams identify their most important gaps to close

• Sharing and aligning on their KPIs

In addition to these, Account Based Marketing (ABM) for many in B2B was seen as the panacea to truly align sales and marketing teams, with both functions needing to work as one team with shared goals.

So you may be shocked to hear that a recent study by LinkedIn showed just 16% alignment between sales and marketing teams, based on who they were targeting. And worse, it revealed a derisory alignment of 5% between brand and demand marketing. 

Alignment strategies are clearly falling short. But where? And why? To understand this we need to delve deeper into the LinkedIn findings.  

Why We’re Still Driving with the Brakes On

In short, according to the research findings, that’s because the sales and marketing are shockingly misaligned with who they target, with just a 16% overlap between them. And this matters a lot. 

An article on the research by Peter Weinberg and Jon Lombardo, highlights why, stating the “data shows that when sellers reach out to buyers who have been exposed to marketing …buyers are much more likely to respond. On average, B2B buyers are 19% more likely to accept a connection request from sales, and 15% more likely to open an inMail message from sales, after seeing marketing content.”

They describe this experience as the ‘circles of boom’. Conversely, our current negative state of play in B2B, with little to no targeting overlap between sales and marketing, they unsurprisingly label as the ‘circles of doom’.

Not forgetting, it gets worse with brand and demand marketing having an average targeting overlap of a tiny 5%. As the article points out, this means that rather than having a single integrated funnel encompassing brand, demand, and sales, the majority of B2B companies function with three separate siloed funnels that scarcely, if ever, intersect. So instead of managing a unified, amplified, continuous pipeline, they oversee three disjointed pipelines, with significant sales leakage between them.

How to Align on Targeting to Unleash Growth

To flip our doom circles into boom circles, Weinberg and Lombardo recommend: 

• Marketing and sales teams syncing up on who they're targeting. Surprisingly, many B2B companies aren't doing this. The higher-ups in both departments need to review and align on their audience strategy, and make sure their teams follow through on it. 

• Boosting alignment, by marketing broadening its targeting. Misalignment between marketing and sales often stems from hyper-targeting strategies in B2B companies. Narrow coverage reduces overlap chances, in turn killing buyer response rates. Marketing holds the key to reaching all potential buyers effortlessly. Weinberg and Lombardo point out that “going broad doesn’t mean reaching everyone – it means reaching anyone who could buy the category, which in B2B is still a relatively small audience.” 

Summing up, despite most B2B companies remaining misaligned, hobbling their own growth prospects, we now have a much greater understanding of the problem and specifically the gaps we need to close. An understanding that is crucial to developing truly effective alignment strategies that can maximise business growth opportunities.

Ready to banish your circles of doom? If you are, I'd love to hear from you.