Marketing Teams Struggle to Deliver ‘Reasonable’ Number of Qualified Sales Opportunities

B2B marketers strive to deliver new sales opportunities to their organizations, but new research suggests that some of them are missing the mark.

The “Business Performance Benchmark Study 2017” from Altify recently found that only 40 percent of companies believe their marketing team delivers a reasonable number of qualified sales opportunities. This is compared to 61 percent of marketers who said the same.

Further, just 50 percent of sales team members claimed that their marketing teams understand their target customers. However, 68 percent of B2B marketers believe that they fully understand their organization’s customers, representing further disconnect.

“According to the participants in our study, and the analysis of their recorded performance, sales and marketing working well together is the single biggest marketing contribution to improved results,” wrote the authors of the report.

At companies where sales and marketing teams work well together, the win rate is +26 percent and the sales cycle is reduced by 18 percent compared to those that do not work well together.

Marketing Automation and Sales Alignment

Previous research indicates that marketing automation platforms (MAPs) can help sales and marketing teams work more closely and effectively.

The “SMB Marketing Automation Blue Book” from Salesfusion discovered that 60 percent of companies that integrate MAPs with customer relationship management systems (CRMs) and established service level agreements (SLAs) have “exceptional” communications between sales and marketing. In comparison, only 22 percent of companies with a MAP and no CRM or SLA integration said the same.

Approximately 68 percent of respondents who use a MAP made the investment to automate the lead nurturing process.