Once the lead becomes an SQL ! the account executive takes over and closes the deal! won or lost.
At first glance! this strategy seems logical enough. Thousands of salespeople have used it thousands of times. But when it comes to alignment! this move relies on a process fraught with potential landmines.
Think about it: if the marketing team has a goal of driving MQLs and is evaluated on their ability to meet that goal! their only attention will be focused on how to get as many content downloads as possible.
What’s the problem? Well! it turns out the audience most likely to read your content isn’t necessarily the audience who wants to buy your product now.
If sales are judged by the number of MQLs that phone number library convert to opportunities! the friction in the business is in the system: the marketing team that meets its goals is not aligned with the sales team that achieves its goals.
Teams that focus on generating MQLs rather than revenue and demand will continue to struggle with alignment and leave themselves ill-equipped to execute ABM campaigns or provide a seamless experience for their customers.
The solution to the MQL battle
Connect with your sales colleagues and discuss how you can establish processes! regular meetings! and other ways to listen and learn from each other.
Sales can teach marketing a lot. For example!
On the other hand! sales can learn from their colleagues in marketing. What content does marketing offer and why? How have they changed segmentation! and how does sales view this on calls? What content is consumed most in successful deals?
Once sales and marketing understand each other better! they can make informed decisions that help both teams win. Once there is a mutual understanding! teams can begin having conversations about important decisions that can have a major impact on the pipeline:
Should we focus on capturing MQLs or should we open up content to drive demand?
Should we define an MQL differently than we currently do?
How can we support asynchronous buying and get leads to SQL or Sales Qualified Opportunity (SQO) status before involving the sales department?
This is a much more productive line of questioning than “Why have you sent me so many junk leads this month?”
Successfully execute ABM actions
The final alignment challenge in this series is the challenge of successfully executing ABM plays with misaligned teams. Ultimately! you can’t!
All of the problem areas described above—poor handoffs! disparate systems! inconsistent data! and the struggle for MQLs—prevent an organization from successfully executing ABM plays ! especially at scale.
Why is it so difficult to achieve ABM goals when sales search engine optimization mails and marketing aren’t talking to each other? It’s because ABM requires you to not just be aligned on a single MQL or SQL definition—you have to define an entire buying committee. This means even more handoffs! systems! data! and goal alignment.
Here are some steps you can take to align your team for ABM:
Make sure you’ve been collecting job titles and purchasing roles. If you haven’t! review your last quarter’s closed deals and manually enter this information or update it through workflows. For example! you can make sure to indicate that a certain how do you handle client feedback position is always a decision-maker.
Create a dashboard to understand which purchasing functions have been involved in your recent deals and who typically comes to the buying table first.
Arrange a meeting between sales and marketing to review this information and agree on the purchasing committee and who to prioritize.
Follow the other solutions described above to ensure your teams are aligned on goals! lifecycle phase definitions! handover protocols! and that your data is clean and your systems are working.
Finally! use your target account and ABM tools to set up a campaign that supports the alignment you’ve created between sales and marketing.
Who says sales and marketing can’t play well together? Most of the time! alignment is within reach! and it only takes a little learning and listening! followed by consistent action! to achieve it.