B2B marketing and sales alignment: From SKO to ROI
As January draws to a close, so too does the need to finalize your sales and marketing alignment for the year ahead. Now is the moment to ensure your positive momentum is translated into a tactical plan that will convert awareness to interest to leads to customers faster than ever before. For many of our clients, this time of year is when takeaways from their sales kickoff (SKO) become annual commitments and KPIs.
We encourage marketing leaders to begin with the end in mind. This is more than a mantra. By thinking and acting two steps ahead, you'll identify the synergies your business needs to make marketing a force multiplier for sales and an essential conduit for high return on investment (ROI) marketing.
Before diving in, we’ll share a data point that continues influencing how we think about sales and marketing. Research published by Forrester in Q2 2024 found that 82% of senior executives claimed their product, sales, and marketing teams are aligned (and 41% said highly aligned). On the flip side, 65% of sales and marketing professionals believe there is a lack of alignment among the leaders in their organizations. This gap in perceptions has tangible repercussions on everything from marketing ROI to sales conversion rates to long-term competitiveness.
Effective SKOs set up sales and marketing teams for success when voices from both sides are heard and clear plans follow. Here are three post-SKO themes we emphasize to our marketing and sales clients:
Center on a joint view of your ideal customer profile (ICP) and prioritize the direct and partner co-marketing investments that will fill your pipeline with sales-ready leads. It’s common for sales and marketing to have different perspectives on their company’s or product’s ICP.
When both sides work together toward a common definition and draft aligned strategies, they create leverage where marketing investments will directly benefit sales, and sales performance will improve marketing. We appreciate that this might sound easier on-screen than it is in real life—which is why we’re dedicating resources to helping clients assemble data-driven ICPs that work, and clients are putting them to use more effectively than ever before.
Assemble a content and campaign plan that will promote your offers at each phase of your buyer’s journey. This will help ensure clean handoffs and consistent messaging. We all know that high-quality marketing qualified leads (MQLs) are the lifeblood of all business-to-business (B2B) tech companies. We also know that converting those MQLs to sales qualified leads (SQLs) takes attention to detail and content catalogs that run deep.
We stress the importance of thinking in sequence. Successful B2B brands assemble marketing and sales narratives that dovetail from one conversation (or journey stage) to another. They originate quarter-by-quarter storylines and supporting assets, then execute against them. Most importantly, they don’t assume that success at the MQL level will directly translate to SQLs. They know they need to earn those conversions and work to make them happen, one asset at a time.
Collaborate on every revenue opportunity. Identify co-sell accounts where you’re able to fully activate your partner ecosystem and establish feedback loops to help you market and co-market with the most up-to-date intelligence. If you’ve heard the phrase “We all go farther together,” then you likely appreciate this notion. When combined with data from Gartner indicating that marketing and sales functions collaborate on just 3 out of 15 commercial activities, room for improvement is clear.
We’ve chatted with hundreds of marketers who are striving to do more with less, to stretch their resources, and use the power of tech to grow revenue. Our advice is to look for overlapping or complementary ideal customer profiles (ICPs) and buyer challenges, opportunities where your storyline adds value to that of your partner, and vice versa. Then use that intelligence to reach buyers with content and offers that land your joint value proposition. We’re using co-sell tech such as PartnerTap to enable high-probability sales targets, and we’re deepening our partner co-marketing services to help partners and vendors optimize the resources already at their disposal. In an increasingly networked world, we’re seeing significant benefits to this type of co-marketing and co-sell collaboration.
Establishing a continuous cycle of intelligence and support
We've talked to marketing leaders who demand responsibility for sales and with salespeople who invest time and resources in marketing because they know it's their most reliable path to exceeding quota. The most common refrain among both groups is the advantages of closed-loop feedback and execution, where sales and marketing have a continuous cycle of intelligence and support to draw upon. By making the most of their experienced teams, thoughtful processes, and AI-driven co-sell, co-marketing, and sales enablement platforms, they not only share a unified vision of where they're going, but also a systems-based approach toward how to get there. The three themes mentioned above are at the center of this vision.
Ready to Drive B2B Growth in 2025? Let's Talk.
Knack Collective helps B2B marketing and sales teams align, accelerate pipeline, and increase marketing ROI. Whether you're looking to refine your SKO strategy, develop a full-funnel content plan, or explore partner co-marketing opportunities, we’re here to help.
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