Data That Supports True
Sales & Marketing Alignment
Nashville Analytics Summit, August 2018

@annatalerico
Co-founder, Beacon9
@justintalerico
Co-founder, Beacon9

What do we know about sales & marketing alignment?
At ion interactive, the company we co-founded, Anna led the sales team and Justin led the marketing team. We
believe sales and marketing alignment doesn’t happen with status updates or “one hand knowing what the other is
doing”. Sales and marketing alignment comes from joint KPIs and agreements.

Let’s face it, the
sales and
marketing stuff is
complicated.
Cisco’s 2017 MarTech Stackie is
just one example of the
complex set of systems
operated by sales & marketing.
Many of these collect data and
surface analytics.

Is it any wonder sales & marketing
alignment is a challenge?

Typical Sales KPIs
‣ Calls, emails, connects
‣ Appointments set
‣ Demos given
‣ New pipeline generated
‣ Cross-sell, up-sell, renewals
‣ Bookings

Typical Marketing KPIs
‣ Number of leads / MQLs
‣ Cost-per-lead / opportunity / deal
‣ Traffic / unique visitors
‣ Inbounds / inbound ratios
‣ Activity / engagement

Radically different sets of KPIs with
virtually no overlap or intersection.

Is it any wonder sales & marketing
alignment is a challenge?

And the data supports what we all
know about sales & marketing
alignment. It’s not good.

Only 30% of CMOs have a clear
program or process to make sales &
marketing alignment a priority.
CMO Council

Only 8% of companies have strong
alignment between their sales and
marketing departments.
Forrester Research

Sales reps ignore 50% of
marketing leads.
ReachForce

Just 56% of organizations validate
leads before passing to sales.
MarketingSherpa

79% of marketing leads never
convert into sales.
HubSpot

Companies with poor
sales & marketing alignment show
revenue declines.
Aberdeen Research Group

The 2nd highest area lacking alignment?
Metrics & analytics.
Corporate Visions

Is it any wonder sales & marketing
alignment is a challenge?

And yet…

…the business case for real sales
& marketing alignment is strong.

Organizations with tightly aligned
sales and marketing functions enjoy
36% higher customer retention rates.
MarketingProfs

Aligning sales and marketing also
leads to 38% higher sales win rates.
MarketingProfs

B2B organizations with tightly aligned
sales and marketing operations achieve
24% faster three-year revenue growth and
27% faster three-year profit growth.
SiriusDecisions

Companies with “dynamic, adaptable sales
and marketing processes” report an average
of 10% more sales people on-quota
compared to other companies.
CSO Insights

56% of aligned organizations met their revenue
goals, and 19% beat their goals. Among misaligned
organizations, by comparison, just 37% met their
revenue goals, and just 7% beat them.
Act-On

30% reduction in CAC and 20%
improvement in LTV.
When we prioritized strong sales and marketing alignment we
achieved significant business results. Here’s how.

4Watershed Alignment Moments

Watershed Moment #1:
Lead Scoring

The most common cause
of sales & marketing finger pointing?

Leads, of course.
Quantity & Quality

Sales doesn’t want MGLs.
(Marketing Generated Leads)

They just want good leads.
By their standards.

They have to trust the lead
scoring process.

Huge leap in alignment:
Assigned Leads

Joint sales & marketing criteria for
assigned leads.

Objective & Automated

Assigned Lead Criteria
‣ ICP Country
‣ Not Agency
‣ $10M+ Revenue
‣ Role
‣ Verifiable

Assigned Lead performance used to
align spend and efficacy —
CPAL (aligned) instead of CPL (marketing).

Watershed Moment #2:
Shared Ops

Silos
Kill Alignment

vs.SalesTech MarTech

SalesTech MarTech
+

A Single Sales & Marketing Ops Role

In Both Team Standups Every Day

Aligned Data Strategy, Scoring,
Surfacing, Appending, Nurturing

Watershed Moment #3:
Data Strategy

Marketing needs to ask sales:
“What do you want to know?”
And then go get it.

Explicitly Declared Data
rather than inferred.

Ask Questions. Surface Answers.

Marketing alerts surface leads whose
explicit answers match what sales
wants to know.

We used interactive content to learn more about the leads.
Gathering prospect data through interactive content experiences such as
assessments, quizzes, calculators and interactive ebooks.

Explicit data increases lead velocity
by guiding sales to ready buyers.

Automated & Fast
Sales Gets Leads at
Seducible Moments

Watershed Moment #4:
From Sales KPIs & Marketing KPIs to
Shared KPIs

vs.Sales KPIs Marketing KPIs

This was the real breakthrough…

Sales Marketing
+KPIs
Joint

Where are the intersections of
marketing KPIs and sales KPIs?

‣ Calls, emails, connects
‣ Appointments set
‣ Demos given
‣ New pipeline generated
‣ Cross-sell, up-sell, renewals
‣ Bookings
‣ Number of leads / MQLs
‣ Cost-per-lead / opportunity / deal
‣ Traffic / unique visitors
‣ Inbounds / inbound ratios
‣ Activity / engagement
Sales KPIs Marketing KPIs

For Example
We moved from marketing being measured on inbounds, and sales being measured on overall
pipeline created, to a new joint KPI of inbound pipeline created. Each team depended on each other to
achieve the goal. Joint KPIs bring true alignment because both teams are equally responsible.

Joint Sales
& Marketing KPIs
‣ Inbound Pipe
‣ Marketing Generated Pipe
‣ Normalized Closed-Lost Reasons
‣ Lead Velocity
‣ CAC, LTV, and Magic Number

Our Joint KPIs Included Joint Decision Making
Data tells most of the story, but humans perspective brings it all together. Most budgeting decisions were made
with input from both sales and marketing, based on both the numbers and the experience with the leads. Which
trade shows to attend is a perfect example of joint decision making.

The Ultimate
Shared Metrics

Customer Acquisition Cost
Efficiency
The sales & marketing dollars required
to acquire a new customer.

Customer Lifetime Value
Quality
The total lifetime revenue expected from a customer.

Magic Number
The ratio of acquisition cost to annualized revenue. In other
words, what it costs to acquire a dollar in annual revenue.

Alignment = Capital Efficient Scale
We attribute our 30% reduction in Customer Acquisition Cost and
20% improvement in Lifetime Value to sales & marketing alignment.

Summary
1. CPAL Aligns Spend & Efficacy
2. Shared Ops Aligns Tools, Scoring, Surfacing, Appending & Nurturing
3. Joint Data Strategy Aligns What Drives Pipe
4. Shared KPIs Align Customer Acquisition with the Business
5. Business Metrics Align Everything to Growth

Thank you!
www.beacon9.com
@annatalerico
@justintalerico

SaaS Business Advisory
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