Establishing goals is pointless if teams then don’t deliver upon them
Posted: Sun Jan 05, 2025 9:03 am
One of the most common points of friction between marketing and sales teams is the perception that the other team isn’t doing their job properly.
Sales will think that marketing isn’t creating enough high-fit leads and marketing will feel like sales isn’t doing a sufficient job following up on the leads they provide.
To prevent those disagreements from occurring, you should create a service-level agreement (SLA), which is a contract that holds both teams accountable to agreed upon expectations.
Example of a service level agreement
In an SLA, marketing will be assigned a quota for how many qualified leads they need to generate and sales will receive guidelines for the follow-up they do with those leads, like a minimum number of outreach attempts and a timeline for how quickly they need to reach out.
On top of that, SLAs include a definition of what constitutes a qualified lead so that marketing and sales can make sure they are both pursuing the same type of prospects. Define your ideal customer profiles (ICPs) and buyer personas along with what indicates sales readiness.
Technology
Your tech stack should be enabling your marketing and sales employment database teams to achieve their goals and measure their progress. For example, you need to have a way to mark leads as qualified in your CRM and track the outreach sales reps are doing for each contact.
The right automation and software should make it easier for marketing and sales to do their jobs. Instead of telling sales they need to reach out to each lead assigned to them within 32 hours and follow-up at least seven times but leave everything else about remembering to do that work up to them, you can automate notifications and tasks so when a rep is assigned a lead they are instantly notified and have the work they need to do mapped out.
Setting up automated lead scoring can make it easier to determine how qualified a lead is. You can create scores that measure both fit and interest so if a lead comes from a company that matches your ideal customer profile and has engaged with a lot of your content and communications, marketing can determine based on the lead score that that lead is ready to be passed on to sales.
Reporting tools with dashboards can help provide visibility and maintain accountability. For example, you can enable everyone to see what the average number of follow-up messages are, how many uncontacted leads a rep has in their name or how many qualified leads have been generated in the current period.
Sales will think that marketing isn’t creating enough high-fit leads and marketing will feel like sales isn’t doing a sufficient job following up on the leads they provide.
To prevent those disagreements from occurring, you should create a service-level agreement (SLA), which is a contract that holds both teams accountable to agreed upon expectations.
Example of a service level agreement
In an SLA, marketing will be assigned a quota for how many qualified leads they need to generate and sales will receive guidelines for the follow-up they do with those leads, like a minimum number of outreach attempts and a timeline for how quickly they need to reach out.
On top of that, SLAs include a definition of what constitutes a qualified lead so that marketing and sales can make sure they are both pursuing the same type of prospects. Define your ideal customer profiles (ICPs) and buyer personas along with what indicates sales readiness.
Technology
Your tech stack should be enabling your marketing and sales employment database teams to achieve their goals and measure their progress. For example, you need to have a way to mark leads as qualified in your CRM and track the outreach sales reps are doing for each contact.
The right automation and software should make it easier for marketing and sales to do their jobs. Instead of telling sales they need to reach out to each lead assigned to them within 32 hours and follow-up at least seven times but leave everything else about remembering to do that work up to them, you can automate notifications and tasks so when a rep is assigned a lead they are instantly notified and have the work they need to do mapped out.
Setting up automated lead scoring can make it easier to determine how qualified a lead is. You can create scores that measure both fit and interest so if a lead comes from a company that matches your ideal customer profile and has engaged with a lot of your content and communications, marketing can determine based on the lead score that that lead is ready to be passed on to sales.
Reporting tools with dashboards can help provide visibility and maintain accountability. For example, you can enable everyone to see what the average number of follow-up messages are, how many uncontacted leads a rep has in their name or how many qualified leads have been generated in the current period.