5 Signs your Marketing and Sales Departments are Siloed

By Ross Lancaster, Content Specialist

The traditional paradigms of B2B demand generation are shifting rapidly. A new Ironpaper survey of 180 B2B decision-makers found that before COVID-19, 85% of B2B businesses relied on in-person events to drive demand, but less than 15% still considered trade shows to be a highly successful lead generation strategy.

Forty-three percent of those B2B decision-makers said they reallocated significant portions of their in-person event budgets to digital marketing, and 33% shifted funds to marketing technology.

These factors mean that the digital buyer’s journey will be far more critical for B2B companies than before the pandemic. Accordingly, traditional silos between marketing and sales need to be torn down so content and other marketing tactics can enable sales.

Here are five signs that marketing and sales need to be more aligned at a company.

1. One team has access to data and technology that the other doesn’t.

Marketing and sales alignment means that one department can’t be withholding data or automation capabilities that could be used to help nurture leads, drive conversions, or simply make each team’s lives easier. 

Often, the data disconnect between sales and marketing can be thought of in terms of marketers receiving access to a CRM that sales use like HubSpot or Salesforce. But the new survey data from Ironpaper indicates that data may need to flow in the other direction.

The Ironpaper survey (conducted in conjunction with Momentive, formerly SurveyMonkey Enterprise Service) found that 28.6% of salespeople reported a lack of data and insights is impacting their ability to generate revenue, while just 7.6% of marketers said the same.

2. Each team blames the other for failure to meet KPIs.

If sales and marketing aren’t on the same page, a vicious cycle can emerge. Marketing produces leads for the sales team to pursue, sales can’t convert the leads, and conversions are minimal. Operations and the C-suite wonder why the company is underperforming and cash flow suffer.

If you’re a marketer in a siloed organization, you might be asking yourself why sales did such a poor job of closing. In sales, you might wonder why marketing was sending so many bad leads down the funnel.

Either slide blaming the other in such a manner is likely a sign of marketing and sales having different priorities.

3. Unclear lead qualification.

Sales might have such an issue with the leads marketing sends along because the teams did not define lead qualification criteria. This can often happen in organizations that don’t have an ideal customer profile communicated to both teams. 

In this case, because marketing isn’t operating in as much of a buyer-driven framework as it should, that team could be sending leads to sales with too broad of a focus or erroneously qualifying those that aren’t likely to stay engaged throughout a sales cycle.

The Ironpaper survey found that 25% of respondents said a common reason sales prospects drop out of the pipeline is because leads are not qualified. A further 22% said keeping leads engaged through a long sales cycle was another prominent reason prospects drop from the pipeline.

4. Sales and marketing leaders aren’t talking to each other.

As the old saying goes, “A little communication goes a long way.” Many organizations operate under the mentality that sales and marketing are separate entities with no unified responsibilities. If this is the case, sales and marketing can’t be as aligned as they should be.

Leaders can play a huge role in both enabling and preventing silence between departments. While in-person sales and events may have driven business among B2B companies and paper over the cracks of misalignment, digital selling enabled by marketing is here to stay.

5. Sales and marketing have siloed content.

A few years ago, research showed that 60 to 70% of content created by marketing departments at B2B companies sat unused. While that statistic may have changed in subsequent years, content must serve a purpose in the B2B buyer’s journey. But content isn’t solely the domain of marketing -- sales teams often have pieces of content that can help buyers but are never shared to help attract leads.

Additional research shows that sales ignore up to 80% of marketing leads at B2B companies. Content must help buyers at each stage of the journey and in a way that speaks to the pain points buyers experience.

Knocking down the silos that prevent alignment between marketing and sales at a B2B company is a process that may not be comfortable for all. But it’s a necessary one. Alignment can potentially produce 32% revenue growth year-over-year and a 208% increase in marketing revenue. 

Sources

B2B Marketing, 2020 guide to helping sales and marketing work effectively together, Sept. 15, 2020.

Content Marketing Institute, How Well Does Content and Marketing Help Sales Teams? [New Research], April 14, 2021.

Forbes, 60% Of B2B Content Sits Unused, Here's the Fix, Jan. 17, 2016.

Marketo, Sales and Marketing Alignment.