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Sales and marketing alignment is essential for driving business growth because it ensures both teams work in harmony toward common goals, improving overall efficiency and effectiveness. When aligned, marketing can better target the right prospects, and sales can focus on high-quality leads, reducing wasted efforts.
But achieving that alignment isn’t easy. You’d think it would happen naturally, given that both are focused on helping the business generate revenue. Marketing creates awareness and demand for the company’s products or services, while sales focuses on turning leads into buyers.
Too often, though, sales and marketing teams operate in silos, focused primarily on their own problems and opportunities. Communication between the two teams can be poor.
What can help break down silos and bridge gaps between the two? The strategic use of data, and sales and marketing analytics. In this guide, we’ll explain how putting everyday customer data at the fingertips of sales and marketing teams can get these two critical functions in sync.
Sales and marketing analytics involves collecting, analysing, and interpreting data from sales and marketing activities to measure performance, understand customer behavior, and improve decision-making. These analytics help businesses track key metrics like lead generation, conversion rates, customer acquisition costs, and sales revenue.
By using data-driven insights, companies can optimise marketing campaigns, allocate resources more effectively, and enhance sales and marketing strategies to drive growth and profitability.
Analytics delivers insights into customer trends and behaviors, enabling marketers to achieve precise audience segmentation and increased personalisation. It can also lead to more targeted messages that qualify more leads, increase sales, and boost marketing efficiency and ROI.
Sales and marketing analytics also helps teams reduce costs by identifying wasted ad spend and making better business decisions. These analytics can even be used to forecast future demand and changes in consumer behavior so that businesses can plan to meet their customers’ wants and needs more proactively, efficiently, and accurately.
What types of sales and marketing analytics should your business use? There are three options to consider: descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive. (You may decide to use them all.)
You are spoiled for choice when it comes to key performance indicators (KPIs) you can use to measure the performance of marketing campaigns. The trick is deciding which ones make the most sense for your business and measurement goals. With that in mind, here are six widely used KPIs you may want to consider.
Conversion rate measures the number of website visitors who become leads or customers. It’s an indicator of campaign effectiveness. If a campaign results in the addition of 100 new visitors to your website, and 17 visitors qualify as leads because they registered, signed up for a newsletter, or made a purchase, then the conversion rate is 17%.
If the data shows a landing page generates more calls and more sales (conversions), marketing can then funnel more resources to that page.
CTR assesses the performance of online ad and email campaigns by measuring the number of customers who visit your website or app as a direct result of a pay-per-click (PPC) ad campaign or clicking on a hyperlink, call to action (CTA), or linked email image.
Calculate CTR by dividing the total number of emails or ads clicked on by the number of emails or ads sent (minus emails that bounced because they failed to reach the recipient).
You can improve your numbers by having a clear CTA in the ad or email, such as “Click here to save 20% today!” Using images and compelling subject lines in emails or taglines in ads also improves CTR. You can experiment with CTAs and headlines through A/B testing.
ROI measures how much you make from a specific ad or campaign. If you spend $10,000 on a PPC Google Ads campaign which results in $80,000 in sales, your ROI is $70,000 or 700%. That’s a reasonable ROI from such a campaign, but ROI can vary widely. Generally, a 5:1 ratio signifies a good ROI. You can use basic online analytics tools like Google Analytics to help inform your marketing strategy and boost ROI.
If your sales and marketing teams have access to a real-time revenue execution platform like Invoca, you can supplement data coming through digital channels (e.g., mobile, social, website, email and search) with offline data, such as phone calls coming into your call centre. This process provides a complete picture of which customer interactions are working so that marketing can focus on the most productive interactions and inrease ROI.
MQLs are leads marketing believes are most likely to move through the sales funnel, first as Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) and, eventually, as customers. Achieving that goal means emphasising the importance of good communication between marketing and sales teams.
Providing sales with MQLs means sales reps can spend less time on prospecting and more time selling. Marketing can deliver more MQLs to sales by understanding which qualities make a lead likely to convert. Here’s where marketing being closely aligned with sales is key. Sales teams can communicate and define those qualities to make it easier to pinpoint MQLs.
CPL is the total cost of generating one lead. You calculate CPL by dividing total marketing spend by the total number of leads. So, if you spend $1,000 on an online PPC ad campaign and you qualify 300 leads, your CPL is $3.33. CPL helps you evaluate the lead generation efficiency of campaigns. If you attribute more than $3.33 in ROI to each lead, you are doing well.
You can optimise CPL by being strategic in your markting efforts, using tools like audience segmentation and personalisation. For example, an auto dealer offering cash bonuses for trade-ins could use segmentation to target customers who bought vehicles from the dealership in the past five years and may be interested in upgrading. The dealer might personalise incentives based on a customer’s past purchase behavior, such as offering higher trade-in bonuses for longtime customers or specific vehicle models.
This strategy ensures the promotion reaches the right audience with a message that resonates, increasing the likelihood of conversions and trade-ins. The dealer can keep CPL low while boosting their profit margin.
Engagement rate measures how well your audience responds to the content of your marketing campaigns, including social media content and pages. It is calculated by dividing the number of interactions by the total number of followers or visitors. This includes social media, site, and email interactions.
Social media metrics for engagement include the number of followers across your social channels, and the number of likes, shares, reposts, reactions, and impressions. You can boost social media engagement by providing interesting content and gamification, using games to entertain and reward the audience with prizes.
It’s important to track how many visitors come to your site, but you also wanted to dig into how they engage with your site by measuring:
Email open rate is based on the number of emails sent in a campaign, divided by the number of recipients who opened the email. This provides insight into the strength of your segmentation and email subject line.
When targets open your email, you can measure the audience’s level of engagement by tracking the click rate (i.e., measuring clicks on CTAs, links, or images).
You can optimise for higher engagement rates in social posts, on sites, and in emails by always making sure content is relevant. You can’t hope for engagement without being engaging!
While achieving sales and marketing alignment is the goal, it’s important to recognise that these functions are different. As such, sales has its own key performance metrics to guide strategy. (We explain the formulas for calculating these 11 KPIs, but if you prefer to use a calculator, here’s one you can download.)
SCR measures the number of leads that convert to customers; it’s measured over a specific time period and expressed as a percentage of total leads. If your sales team has 3,000 leads for a monthly campaign, and 150 leads convert, that’s a 5% SCR. (Average conversion rates run between 2% and 5% for most industries, so you’ll be sending out kudos for this campaign!)
You can achieve high sales conversion rates through effective training of sales staff. Consider using lessons learned from real-world objections tracked, recorded and analysed from actual sales calls to supercharge your training. You can also boost SCR by effectively analysing customer data to drive more qualified leads into the sales funnel.
Average deal size measures the value of sales transactions. You calculate it by dividing total sales revenue by the total number of closed deals.
Understanding a team’s average deal size helps sales leaders set achievable timelines and goals for revenue. So, if your team is closing a lot of deals but missing revenue goals it’s a sign that something is lacking, either high-quality leads or training.
You can boost the average deal size by emphasising upselling and cross-selling strategies. We’ll discuss these approaches in more detail later in this section, but know that upselling moves leads to higher-priced solutions, while cross-selling provides leads with complementary services and products to the main sale, such as an add-on to an insurance policy or custom trim on a new car.
Sales cycle length measures sales efficiency. It’s the time it takes to move a lead through the funnel to a transaction. This metric is calculated by dividing the number of days to close every sale by the number of closed deals.
You can reduce sales cycle length using data-driven insights to plan conversations, by speaking to the right decision-maker from the outset, and countering objections early in the process. Automating routine processes such as prospecting, forecasting, and lead qualification also frees up time for sales professionals to focus on conversions.
LRT tracks the average time it takes sales teams to respond to calls or online inquiries from new leads within a specific period. The goal is to minimise response times because faster responses result in faster conversions. According to InsideSales, conversion rates are eight times greater when a response occurs in the first five minutes.
You can improve lead response time by offering chatbot and livetext options where online leads can get simple questions answered quickly. For phone leads, investing in intelligent call routing is a must. It allows sales to see who is calling, winnows out support calls, and seamlessly routes potential leads to the most appropriate team member.
Quota attainment measures sales team or individual rep performance in reaching goals and is a key KPI for revenue growth. It’s calculated by dividing actual sales by the sales quota and expressing it as a percentage. If a sales rep’s quota for the year is $50,000 and actual sales are $41,000, quota attainment is 82%.
If you can get your team to 80%, that’s considered good quota attainment. You can improve your chances of reaching this mark by setting realistic quotas based on historical performance and benchmarked to industry norms. You must also ensure your sales reps are trained to a high standard to give them the best chance of success.
The “win rate” is a vital metric for tracking sales success. You get the rate by dividing deals won by deals pursued during a certain time period. You can calculate win rates based on the performance of individual reps or entire sales teams.
Understanding win rates can help sales leaders set practical goals and forecast more effectively. If your team notched 45 deals in the month and pursued 169, that’s a 26.6% win rate. It’s also a number that needs boosting: Win rates vary by industry, but a survey by RAIN Group identified an average win rate of 47%.
If you increase the win rate without adding headcount, you can dramatically increase revenue. The win rate improves when marketing delivers high-quality MQLs, and sales delivers high-quality content throughout the customer journey. For instance, sales shouldn’t waste resources hitting leads with hyper-personalised content if those potential customers are only at the awareness stage. You should also analyse customer data for insight into how to engage leads that are more likely to purchase.
Tracking pipeline velocity helps to inform your sales budgeting and forecasting. Pipeline velocity measures how quickly leads are converted into revenue-generating customers. It combines the number of leads, average deal value, win rate, and sales cycle length to provide a metric for efficiency.
You can improve pipeline velocity by filling the pipeline with more leads, increasing average deal size, and streamlining the sales process.
Upsell and cross-sell rates track whether your team is successful at increasing the value of your relationship with customers. Upselling is when a customer buys a higher-value product or service than they initially inquired about, such as a premium package for a new car instead of the base model package.
Cross-selling occurs when customers make additional purchases related to the main purchase. As an example, a financial advisor might recommend a retirement savings plan to a client who already has a personal investment account, helping the client diversify their financial portfolio while boosting the advisor’s sales.
You can increase upselling and cross-selling using data-driven insights from past interactions with the customer, matching recommendations to what you know about them, and by offering value in addition to purchases. For example, a cooling and heating firm might offer $25 gift cards in return for subscribing to an annual maintenance plan.
Sales forecast accuracy measures the reliability of sales predictions. Accurate sales forecasts help the entire business, from human resources to finance and accounting to supply chain operations to sales and marketing.
Some sales experts rely on past experience or gut feeling to forecast sales. That’s not the way to do it, though, if accuracy is your aim. You can improve the process greatly by using technology tools to analyse past and current data, and by applying predictive analytics.
Gross margin, or gross profit margin, is a financial metric that defines profitability. It is calculated by subtracting the total cost of the product or service from the sales price.
If an auto dealer agrees to sell a car to a customer for $41,999 and the total cost to the dealer, including the dealer invoice price, sales and marketing costs, is $40,361, the gross margin for the dealership is $1,638 or 3.9%.
You can increase gross margins by reducing variable costs, like sales and marketing, and by using pricing strategies, such as dynamic pricing or cost-plus pricing.
You can calculate CLV based on a customer’s expected payments to your business over time. So, if a customer buys home insurance with a $1,000 annual premium and they stick with that policy at that same rate for five years, the CLV would be $5,000.
You can increase CLV by upselling, using loyalty programs to encourage customers to spend more, and focusing on delivering superior customer service and personalised experiences.
Analytics based on data-driven insights can deliver a huge boost to sales and marketing efforts. Keeping in mind the KPIs described above, here’s a step-by-step guide to help deliver growth.
Your business has multiple sources of sales and marketing data. Collect and integrate that data to create a complete picture of your customers and marketing performance.
Use advanced tools, like Google Analytics, to collate web-based data and supplement it with offline data from phone calls using technologies like Invoca’s real-time revenue execution platform. This creates a single source of truth to help align sales and marketing.
Carefully monitor how customers interact with your sales and marketing content, such as emails, social media, and websites, to understand their preferences and behaviors. Use analytics to detect patterns in customer behavior or common pathways to conversion.
For example: Are most customers clicking on a specific image in an email? Is there some commonality in the questions being asked by customers during sales calls, such as pricing? The answers to these types of questions can help inform sales and marketing campaigns and lead to more effective strategies.
Use data analysis to divide your audience into target segments based on demographics, behavior, past purchase activity, what they said in phone conversations, and other relevant criteria. Segmentation allows you to tailor marketing campaigns for each segment, increasing relevance and effectiveness and reducing wasted spend.
Continuously measure campaigns, and use data-driven insights to make timely adjustments so you can optimise performance and eliminate wasted spend. Use metrics like click-through rates, conversion rates, phone call conversions, and ROI to measure performance.
Employ traditional A/B testing to compare different versions of campaigns, ads, and marketing assets to identify which elements perform best in front of your target audiences.
Use data analysis to identify the channels and campaigns generating the most leads. Include offline channels such as phone calls if you are using call tracking software like Invoca. This allows you to concentrate your resources where the impact will be greatest.
You can score and nurture the resulting leads based on their behavior and how they engage with your brand. Data will reveal the highest-quality leads and provide the content you need to create personalised campaigns to propel leads further and faster through the sales funnel.
Use data from sales metrics such as conversion rates, average deal size, sales cycle length, and pipeline velocity to optimise sales performance through deeper analysis and more accurate sales forecasting. You can set realistic targets for your team as well as individual sales reps using predictive analytics based on historical data. (Be sure to deliver ongoing training, too!)
You can also drive better sales performance by using AI to automatically score quality assurance (QA). Invoca’s automated QA provides objective scores for every call into the contact centre in real time. Managers can focus on problem calls and deliver timely, targeted training to agents. And agents can review scores and call transcripts immediately after each call, so they can make their own adjustments on the fly and deliver higher-quality performances in future customer conversations.
Ensure your sales and marketing teams align on common goals and metrics using the guidelines we’ve discussed above. Promote a culture of collaboration and communication between sales and marketing through regular sharing of data and analysis.
Cement this culture by making integrated tools available to both teams. A revenue execution tool that provides both teams with data insight based on a complete (online and offline) picture of the customer journey can help align sales and marketing goals and strategies.
Use data-driven insights from online and offline touchpoints to build detailed customer profiles based on preferences and needs. Once complete, use personalisation to make communications relevant to each profile. For example, if a customer mentions pricing during a phone call with your contact centre, serve them up with a discount offer in your next email campaign.
You can also use data insights to inform real-time personalisation. For instance, a credit card provider might target a customer who has amassed a high volume of rewards points with an email encouraging them to apply their points toward a specific travel offer.
When you use tools like Invoca PreSense, you can take personalisation even further — and increase sales. PreSense captures real-time insights about callers, including previous marketing engagements and demographic data. Using PreSense to automatically equip your sales teams with this type of information empowers them to personalise and customise conversations for every caller. That, in turn, can help them become more effective at closing sales calls.
Through regularly monitoring of data analytics, you can keep close tabs on sales and marketing performance and make continuous improvements to strategies and tactics. Data insights will help you stay agile, allowing you to respond more quickly to changing market conditions, consumer behavior, and more.
Keeping marketing and sales in alignment is critical to driving revenue growth. But don’t just take our word for it. In a recent survey, we asked marketing, sales, and contact centre leaders at 600 B2C companies if they believed that statement was true, and nine in 10 said yes.
However, only one in 10 respondents said their marketing and sales teams were very strongly aligned. That’s a big disconnect. But Invoca can help. Our real-time revenue execution platform eliminates the biggest barriers to understanding the buyer journey, including offline data silos and blind spots, and helps get marketing, sales, and contact centre teams working as a single revenue team for the business.
To learn more, get our report, The State of B2C Revenue Execution.
If you want to learn even more about how Invoca can help marketing and sales teams align more closely using data, we recommend these additional resources:
If you’d like to see firsthand how our integrated technology can enhance your sales and marketing strategies, help your teams collaborate more effectively, and drive business growth, contact us today to set up a customised demo.
