The Sales and Marketing Alignment Issue Impacting Your Lead Quality

If you attended the live M² forum ‘Fire Up Your Lead Quality’ on February 24, 2022, you heard expert opinions on the relationship between marketing and sales from both sides of the table.  One of the things discussed at length is that getting sales and marketing to speak the same language (the first step to improving lead quality) is a challenge.

So what can we do about it?

Here’s a hint: improving lead quality through better alignment is not about technology or frameworks.

It’s actually about starting a conversation.

As a marketer, you’ve probably tried to work on improving alignment with your sales team in the past, but I’m willing to bet that the conversation has never been structured.

How to Start a Conversation with Sales

First things first, remember that for sales, talking is just talking. They have limited time as they try to hit their weekly revenue goals. So when having a lead quality conversation, everything must be streamlined and structured. 

Also, as someone who has run many of these sales and marketing alignment meetings, put yourself in the sales team shoes. There is likely a lack of trust with marketing, so part of this conversation must be focused on building trust. Believe me, it will go a long way to show sales that something is different, and that marketing is working to fix the problem.

Sales and Marketing Alignment Tools

With this in mind, we developed two tools that can be instantly put to work in your organization to help address the disconnect between sales and marketing. These two open, editable documents are the tools we at Mass Engines use during our own sales and marketing alignment conversations with clients. Make a copy of these documents, then edit them to best suit your organization.

Tool #1: Marketing Talking Points to Improve Lead Quality

Are you ready to kick off your meeting with sales on how to improve lead quality but wondering what to say? This document is an awesome tool for marketers to guide the conversation with sales. Pair it with the next tool to run a successful lead quality meeting between Marketing and Sales.

Tool #2: Meeting Agenda Template for Lead Quality

Now that you know what you are going to say in your meeting with sales, you need to ensure you run an efficient meeting.  This will show sales you respect their time and are serious about starting fresh. Use this proven template for your kick off meeting to tackle lead quality with your sales team.

Share Your Experience!

Once you’ve tried out these two tools, let us know how they worked for you.  Head over to the M² LinkedIn community and share. Even better, if you’ve got other tools that have been helpful for you to improve sales and marketing alignment in your own organization, share those in the LinkedIn community as well.  We want this community to be shaped by everyone.

If you want to check out the full conversation, watch the M² live forum ‘Fire Up Your Lead Quality’ below.