At AG Salesworks, we talk about aligning sales and marketing departments quite a bit. By now, most people know that in a successful business, B2B sales and marketing need to work together.
However, many people still harbor a misguided notion about what sales and marketing alignment really is. It's not just a mindset. It's a merging of actionable business processes.
We explored this idea in our Sales Enablement guide last month. Sales enablement is a function that combines responsibilities of both sales and marketing departments. Therefore, it's impossible to have a successful sales enablement process without a healthy alignment between the two departments.
So when we started writing our latest guide, Aligned Lead Nurturing for B2B Sales and Marketing, we wanted to challenge the traditional idea that lead nurturing is primarily a marketing function. The days of segmented sales and marketing tasks are over for most businesses, and that includes lead nurturing. We searched for more information about aligned lead nurturing practices, and in fact found an arsenal of facts and figures to support our claim: B2B lead nurturing works best as a function shared by both sales and marketing.
As we realized that the thought leadership around lead nurturing was slowly shifting, we wanted to provide more for our readers. Since our last infographic received praise, we decided to try our hand at another type of infographic: the funnel.
The Aligned Lead Nurturing Funnel Infographic includes:
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Specific actions sales and marketing can take when nurturing prospects in different buyer stages.
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A 5-step plan for nurturing exploring prospects to champions for your brand.
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Key metrics to observe every step of the way.
Best of all? It’s free, and you don’t need to fill out a form to see it.
If you're interested in a graphic representation of how sales and marketing can really work together on a business practice that is becoming more and more prevalent today, check out our latest infographic. Feel free to share it with others who may be interested, too!
How are you ensuring that sales and marketing aren’t only aligning ideologies, but are also aligning business practices?
Allison Tetreault is the Marketing Content Coordinator at AG Salesworks. She writes, designs and promotes new marketing content every month, monitors and produces updates for social media networks, gathers important data for marketing and sales efforts, and maximizes the potential of content marketing efforts.
