Written by Ruba Khan Managing Director and Co-founder of Revenoir
Welcome to the first edition of "The Engine Room," the Revenoir blog! 🎉
Revenue Operations can be one of those jargon-heavy areas, so this blog is all about breaking down real problems, sharing insights, and cool things we've learned working with ambitious businesses.
As a marketer, one of the biggest challenges I've frequently seen in businesses is that marketing and sales don't get along.
But, why is that? Surely the natural enemy of marketing would be finance, who won't approve our budget uplift, or legal, who makes us change our copy. Sales is and should be our friend: we both like money, go fast, and want to drive revenue.
So, why are marketing and sales frequently fragmented?
I'm going to try to tackle this meaty topic through my own experience as a B2B marketer working closely with sales teams over the last decade as I've somehow managed to figure out how to befriend sales. Here is part one, though I think I'll need a few articles to fully cover this topic.
Different goals, no alignment
In my experience, one of the biggest pain points in fragmented sales and marketing relationships is differing objectives. Marketing is given one set of objectives, and sales has their quota. Each department focuses on hitting their own number, which makes perfect sense. But because each is prioritising something different, disagreement follows. The fix is simple yet difficult: alignment. If marketing and sales are working towards the same thing (revenue is best), they naturally work together.
My controversial opinion: kill the MQL/SQL split
My controversial opinion: we shouldn't separate MQLs and SQLs. There should be one shared definition of a "lead" that both departments agree on. If a prospect is still at the top of the funnel, slowly engaging with content, watching videos, reading reports, they should be treated as a prospect until they're warm enough to become a lead. This quickly removes a common complaint: “the leads from marketing are awful" If only prospects that match a sales-accepted definition of a lead get passed through, only the highest-quality leads get passed through.
Why this is harder than it sounds
Now, as I said, this sounds simple but is actually hard, especially in an established business.
Why?
Often there's existing history, politics, and precedent. Rather than "let's align so we make more money" it can quickly become "marketing must align with sales" and suddenly marketing is carrying a quota with none of the bandwidth or incentive to worry about brand. This works exceptionally well to deliver revenue in the next three to six months, but pipeline will dry up fast due to zero engagement with out-of-market buyers.
Where an outside perspective helps
This is where an external partner can be incredibly valuable in establishing alignment. Having spent my entire career on the client side, I understand firsthand how easy it is to get absorbed in your own organisation and brand, and how hard it can be to take your "internal glasses" off, no matter how much you try. It's difficult to fix things from inside them, because of your own perspective and mindset. External partners don't carry those pre-existing biases, don't need to "take a side," and can look at the situation from a purely commercial perspective. A neutral, objective standpoint helps.
If a fragmented sales and marketing system is something you're struggling with, we'd love to chat. Book a free Growth Audit, completely no-obligation, here.
That's all for the first edition of The Engine Room! We'll be publishing a lot more content to help boost growth in your business, so keep an eye out.
