For decades, the relationship between sales and marketing in many companies has been a story of two separate, siloed worlds. Marketing was responsible for generating “leads” and then tossing them over a wall to the sales team, who were then responsible for closing them. This often led to a culture of finger-pointing, with marketing complaining that sales weren’t following up, and sales complaining that the leads were no good.
That old, broken model has no place in the modern business world. The modern customer journey is no longer a linear handoff; it’s a complex and fluid process. To be effective, your sales and marketing teams must be deeply and seamlessly integrated. This is where technology plays a crucial role in bridging the gap. Lead capturing features on a website, for example, can act as a seamless bridge, engaging a marketing-generated visitor and then intelligently qualifying and routing them to the right salesperson in real-time.
This is the new, unified approach known as “smarketing.” Here are four key connections that the most successful companies are building between their sales and marketing teams.
1. They Define the “Ideal Customer” Together
The most common point of friction between the two teams is a disagreement on what constitutes a “good lead.” To solve this, sales and marketing must work together from the very beginning to create a single, shared definition of the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP).
This is a detailed document that outlines the characteristics of the perfect customer you are trying to attract, from their industry and company size to their job title and their biggest pain points. When both teams have agreed on and are working from the same definition of the target, marketing’s efforts will be perfectly aligned with sales’ needs, resulting in a much higher quality of leads.
2. They Create a “Service Level Agreement” (SLA)
An SLA is a formal, written agreement between the two teams that creates a foundation of mutual accountability. It clearly defines the responsibilities that each team has to the other.
Marketing commits to delivering a specific number of “Marketing Qualified Leads” (MQLs) that meet the agreed-upon ICP definition each month. Sales commits to a specific timeline and a specific number of follow-up attempts for every single MQL that marketing delivers.
An SLA is the key to creating a transparent and data-driven relationship between the two teams, and this eliminates the finger-pointing.
3. Sales is Marketing’s Best Source of Content Ideas
Your sales team is on the front lines, talking to your potential customers every single day. They have a deeper and more current understanding of the customers’ real-world pain points, questions, and objections than anyone else in your company. This is a goldmine of intelligence for your content marketing team.
Your marketing team should have a regular, scheduled meeting with your sales team for the sole purpose of “mining” this intelligence. Ask them:
- “What are the top three questions you get on every sales call?”
- “What is the biggest objection you have to overcome?”
- “What is the one thing our customers don’t understand about our industry?”
The answers to these questions are the titles of your next blog posts.
4. Marketing Creates Content to Help Sales Close Deals
A great marketing team doesn’t just create content for the customer; they also create content to help the sales team be more effective. This is a practice known as sales enablement.
This is content that is specifically designed to be used by a salesperson during the sales process to answer a question or overcome an objection. This could include the following:
- Detailed case studies that a salesperson can send to a prospect in a similar industry.
- One-page “battle cards” that provide a quick summary of your key differentiators against a specific competitor.
- An ROI calculator that helps a salesperson build a clear, financial business case for your solution.
The wall between sales and marketing is an outdated relic. By fostering deep collaboration, shared goals, and a sense of a single, unified “revenue team,” your company can build a powerful and efficient engine for sustainable growth.
