“Sales and marketing alignment” is one of those buzzy phrases people often use without realizing they’re all talking about something slightly different. Sometimes it comes up when marketing is generating leads that sales complains are mostly unqualified. Other times, it comes up when account managers feel like they’re on an island and aren’t receiving the support they need from marketing.
It could also arise when you struggle to pull clear attribution out of your systems (“Where did that customer come from? How were we able to turn them into a customer?”) or when a high percentage of inquiries fail to generate larger order amounts on the back end.
The most important questions are: What does sales and marketing alignment mean for distributors? And how can better alignment lead to more growth?
Defining Sales and Marketing Alignment for Distributors: A Customer-First Approach
A previous DSG article about digital strategies notes that marketing provides what sellers “need to be effective in this cross-channel world — so that they can get the full picture of the customer, their needs, their behaviors and their businesses, and then effectively sell to those customers using digital means.”