Smarketing: Tips to align Marketing and Sales

Smarketing is the alignment of sales and marketing around shared objectives, definitions, data and accountability for revenue. When both teams work as one commercial system rather than as two departments, the company converts more of the demand it already pays to create, shortens sales cycles and gives customers a consistent experience from the first visit to the signed contract.

Consider the monthly commercial committee at a company that sells industrial services. Marketing presents a record number of leads and a rising cost-per-lead curve it is proud of. Sales answers that the leads are weak, that half of them never answer the phone, and that the content marketing produced does not address the objections buyers raise in meetings. The CFO looks at both slides and notices that revenue is flat. Each team is right about its own numbers and wrong about the company's result. No one in the room is responsible for the part that matters: the conversion of attention into revenue.

Traditionally, most areas within organizations have operated as independent entities. The changes the world market is experiencing, such as population aging, the interconnectedness of people, technological advances and globalization, oblige companies to align their areas and streamline processes to improve the customer experience and to reach strategic objectives that create a sustainable competitive advantage. This article takes that principle to the place where it matters most for revenue, the boundary between marketing and sales, and describes how executives can turn two functions into a single engine.

Why is the marketing-to-sales handoff the weakest point in revenue?

To increase sales, marketing and sales must become a collaborative professional team. The reason is not only organizational comfort. Buyers no longer travel through the funnel in the sequence companies design for them. Gartner's research on the B2B buying journey argues that the marketing-to-sales handoff should no longer exist: buyers complete six non-sequential jobs, from problem identification to consensus creation, revisit almost every one of them at least once, and rely about equally on sales representatives and supplier websites for discovery and validation. Gartner's recommendation is that sales and marketing jointly provide consistent, high-quality information across all channels and guide customers through a simpler purchase process.

If the buyer's journey is a maze rather than a line, a handoff between two teams that speak different languages is where deals get lost. The prospect who read three articles and asked a technical question in a webinar arrives in the seller's queue as a name, and the seller starts from zero. The seller's conversations, in turn, contain the exact objections marketing should be answering, yet they rarely return to the content team.

The scale of the problem is documented. HubSpot reports, in its description of the inbound sales methodology, that only about 30% of sales professionals say their sales and marketing teams are closely aligned. According to HubSpot data cited by the author, companies with good smarketing practices generate 208% more revenue than companies without them, and according to Forrester, as cited by the author, only 8% of companies have alignment between strategy and sales. Readers should treat these two numbers as directional, since they come from vendor and analyst material of varying age. Even so, the consistent message across sources is that alignment is uncommon, and that companies that achieve it have an advantage that is difficult to copy.

How do you make collaboration between teams easy?

The first step is to simplify communication, ensuring that all resources and materials are accessible to the members of both teams. The two departments act in a joint feedback loop. Sales operates on the information marketing shares with customers, and marketing uses the customer feedback that sales collects to produce high-quality content that engages prospects. If that loop is slow or broken, content drifts away from real objections and sales drifts away from the message customers have already read.

Technology supports this. Shared information systems, where all kinds of business information can be stored, allow team leaders to create and find relevant, timely information easily, which makes teams more efficient because collaboration processes are optimized. A CRM that both teams use as the single record of the customer, from the first web visit through the closed deal, is the most common foundation. The technology is the easy part, however. The harder part is the habit of recording what happens in a sales conversation so that marketing can learn from it, and the discipline of marketing to explain which content has been sent to whom.

Why do shared definitions matter?

Think of a conversation with someone from another country who speaks the same language. Words and phrases carry different meanings in different places, and misunderstandings happen even when everyone believes they understand each other. Organizations have the same phenomenon. Each department develops its own acronyms and vocabulary, and sometimes the same word means different things to marketing and to sales. The result is friction between groups and lost efficiency.

Technology can exchange information between departments, but first the information must be understandable and accessible to everyone who needs it. The recommended practice is to build a collective set of definitions. For marketing and sales, the key terms are prospect and qualified lead. A company that defines a marketing-qualified lead as anyone who downloads an ebook, while its sellers consider qualified only the person with budget and a defined timeline, will keep arguing about lead quality for years. Writing the definitions together, with criteria that can be checked in the CRM, ends that argument.

Both areas must also work together to build the ideal customer profile and the buyer persona, whether the business is B2C or B2B. Doing so tells marketing which prospects to concentrate its content on, and it helps sales develop strategies aligned with the customer's objectives. If your team needs a starting point for that exercise, see our guide on building your B2B buyer persona properly.

Another way to align terms and processes is a service level agreement between marketing and sales, a document that clarifies each department's role in producing qualified customers: how many leads marketing commits to deliver, how quickly sales commits to contact them, and what happens when a lead is returned. To support the agreement, it is advisable to map the processes and document them in a SIPOC, which shows the flow of tasks, business rules and owners. A typical agreement in a B2B technology firm, for example, would state that every qualified lead receives a first contact within one business day and that sales must give a reason code for any lead it rejects, so that marketing can adjust its targeting each month.

Does personal connection between teams really matter?

It does, and sooner than many executives expect. Creating opportunities for members of both teams to connect personally promotes meaningful relationships and a better understanding of each point of view. No retreat or expensive team-building program is needed. A book club, a shared sports team or a monthly lunch will do. The objective is to know colleagues in the way the company tries to know its customers: their ambitions, their fears, what they are trying to achieve.

When team members feel understood by their peers, communication gets simpler. The two teams begin to see that they are not in competition but working toward a common goal: to improve the company's results while building a successful business. Celebrating victories as a single unit reinforces the message. A skeptical executive might argue that culture is a soft matter next to pipeline numbers. The experience of aligned organizations suggests the opposite: the rituals that build respect between departments are what keep service level agreements and shared metrics from becoming paper exercises.

What does it mean to focus on the whole funnel?

An optimized funnel facilitates sales and the tactics that generate qualified leads. When it operates well, marketing teams can analyze the available data to see where prospects drop out and which content moves them forward. When the funnel is understood and accessible to both teams, they can create better content and place it at strategic contact points. Our article on understanding the inbound marketing funnel describes the stages in detail.

Take a retail bank selling mortgages. Marketing sees that many applicants abandon after the pre-approval calculator, and sales knows from its conversations that customers fear hidden fees at closing. Together, the teams create a short guide that explains the costs, place it right after the calculator, and give advisors a follow-up script that refers to it. Neither team could have solved the drop-off alone, because each held half of the information.

How do you create common goals?

Goal alignment is the foundation of an effective alliance between sales and marketing. Start by connecting the data each team analyzes. Lead generation matters to marketing, but without sales conversions those leads are not quality leads. The two departments should therefore be measured, at least in part, on the same outcomes, such as pipeline created, revenue from marketing-sourced opportunities and conversion at each stage.

The recommended practice is to schedule a monthly meeting at which sales and marketing set lead generation goals together, which increases the efficiency and effectiveness of both departments. When the two teams have an interdependent relationship, they rely on each other to produce and share high-quality content with a target audience. A manufacturing company that tied part of its marketing bonus to closed revenue rather than to lead counts would find the quality conversation changing within a quarter, because marketing would have a direct interest in what happens after the handoff.

What communication rhythm sustains alignment?

Without regular, professional communication between sales and marketing, a productive flow of qualified leads is impossible, and so is completing the sale. The greatest cause of misalignment is the lack of regular, effective communication. Discussing problems and building productive solutions together is an integral part of an effective business. Executives should therefore build a rhythm: a weekly review of leads in progress, a monthly review of goals and the service agreement, and a quarterly review of the persona, the funnel and the content that has worked.

Those sessions should be short and decision-oriented. The weekly meeting reviews specific leads that stalled and why. The monthly one examines the numbers that both teams own. The quarterly one asks whether the market has changed and whether the ideal customer profile still describes the accounts that actually buy. It is common for these meetings to produce friction in the first months, which is a good sign: problems that were hidden are now visible and can be solved.

Why should content be developed as one team?

Creating content together helps both lead generation and sales development. Content built with the inbound marketing methodology, for pre-funnel social selling as well as for sales enablement, can be the final push a prospect needs to decide. Joint development of success stories is a good example, because it highlights the challenges and results of previous customers and can be used with prospects who face similar difficulties. When both teams develop content together, messages and tone stay consistent and prospects remain engaged throughout the funnel.

A company is made up of several parties that must work together to promote successful lead generation and the success of the whole organization. An aligned strategy helps businesses overcome market challenges and enter the new era of digital sales and marketing. For companies that want to extend this alignment into the selling conversation itself, our article on inbound sales and its relation to inbound marketing shows how the same principles shape the way sellers identify, connect, explore and advise.

What this means for the C-level

For the CEO, smarketing is a question of who owns revenue. If marketing owns leads and sales owns closed deals, nobody owns the conversion between them. The most effective structural change is a single revenue leader, or a joint scorecard, so that the two functions answer for the same number. It also protects the company from the cyclical blame that follows every missed quarter.

For the CFO, alignment improves the efficiency of acquisition spend. Resources stop flowing into campaigns that generate volume without pipeline, and forecasts become more reliable because lead stages have shared meaning. For the chief marketing and sales officers, the benefit is attracting and converting the right buyers with one voice, and for the CX leader it is a consistent experience in which the customer never has to repeat information. That consistency supports retention and loyalty, since the relationship that starts with a coherent conversation is more likely to continue after the sale.

How to start on Monday morning

A seasoned consultant would not begin with a reorganization. She would begin with a single hour in which the heads of marketing and sales review twenty recent leads together, half that became customers and half that did not, and discuss what they knew about each one and when. The disagreements in that hour reveal exactly where definitions, data and expectations differ.

From that conversation, write a one-page agreement: what a qualified lead is, how quickly sales responds, what feedback it returns, and which two or three shared numbers both teams will report. Schedule the monthly meeting before leaving the room. In the first quarter, resist the temptation to add new tools. Make the existing CRM carry the agreement, and review whether the definitions are being applied. When the habit works, extend it to joint content planning and to a shared scorecard. If you want to formalize the work on your own processes, the ICX process transformation toolkit offers a structure for mapping and agreeing how work flows between teams.

How ICX helps

ICX Consulting helps companies build a commercial system in which marketing, sales and service share goals, data and accountability. Our marketing and sales funnel optimization work diagnoses where leads are lost between teams, and our lead management practice defines scoring, routing and follow-up rules both teams can trust. We also design the service level agreements and scorecards that keep alignment alive. The technology that supports them, including HubSpot, is configured after the commercial design is clear.

If your leads and your revenue are telling different stories, request a diagnostic with an ICX consultant and see where the handoff breaks.

Frequently asked questions

What is smarketing in simple terms?

Smarketing is the practice of aligning sales and marketing around shared goals, definitions and data. The name combines the two words, and the idea is that both teams are accountable for the same revenue result and operate from one view of the customer.

Who should be responsible for smarketing in a company?

Ideally one executive, such as a chief revenue officer or a commercial director, owns the combined result. Where that is not possible, the heads of sales and marketing should share a scorecard and a regular meeting, with the CEO or CFO reviewing it quarterly to keep both accountable.

Which metrics show that sales and marketing are aligned?

Look at the lead acceptance rate, the conversion from qualified lead to opportunity, the speed of first response, and the revenue from marketing-sourced opportunities. When these improve together and disputes about lead quality decline, alignment is working.

What is the most common mistake when trying to align sales and marketing?

Starting with tools instead of agreements. A shared platform cannot compensate for different definitions of a lead or different incentives. First agree on terms, responsibilities and goals, then configure the CRM to reflect them.

Aligning sales and marketing is not simple. It requires time and resources from everyone involved, and the discipline to meet regularly to discuss goals, share concerns and, above all, celebrate successes. The reward is a commercial system that uses current, accessible information about how prospects react, builds on the strengths of both teams, and treats the customer as one relationship rather than two. If your leadership team is ready to build that system, we would be glad to explore it with you.