How Sales and Marketing Can Work Together to Achieve One Common Goal

7 min readMay 16, 2023

Co-Written by Kathleen Marrero & Kristin Gutierrez

Marketing and sales are two departments often at odds with one another. Misaligned sales and marketing strategies can lead to wasted resources, miscommunication, and a negative impact on revenue generation. Salespeople are focused on bringing in revenue, while marketers are concerned about building brand awareness and credibility. Both teams need to work together to achieve their goals — but they’re not always operating on the same page. True success is when sales and marketing can work together through communication, collaboration, and shared vision to achieve the desired results.

Sales and marketing are essential parts of a company, but they don’t always work together.

Neither sales nor marketing is more important than the other for a company’s growth and success. Most of the time, each department has different goals they need to hit and base them on different key performance indicators.

When the two departments work as separate entities within a company, often, they cannot focus on the company’s main goals and sometimes sabotage each department’s internal goals without intending to do so.

When sales and marketing operate autonomously, it can lead to a number of problems. Marketing may develop campaigns and messaging that do not align with the sales team’s or their customer’s needs and preferences. The sales team may also develop their own strategies and messaging that do not align with the broader marketing efforts, which can lead to a lack of cohesion and consistency in the messaging and branding of the organization, confusing or alienating potential customers.

Additionally, misalignment between sales and marketing can result in wasted resources as both departments work towards different goals and metrics. Marketing may focus on generating leads or website traffic that translate into something other than actual sales. In contrast, the sales team may focus on closing deals without considering the long-term impact on brand awareness and customer engagement.

Ultimately, operating autonomously can lead to a negative impact on revenue generation and the overall success of the business. Effective collaboration between sales and marketing is essential to ensure a cohesive approach that maximizes the impact of resources and generates revenue.

Marketing is more than advertising and promotion — it’s building awareness and credibility for a product or brand.

Marketing is more than advertising and promotion — it’s about creating awareness and credibility for a product or brand. Marketing helps brands build relationships with customers, provide value and become a resource for an audience so they know who you are, what you do, and why they should buy from you and not the competition.

Think of the acronym AIDA, which breaks down into Attention-Interest-Desire-Action. AIDA is the goal of marketing campaigns. Get attention for your product or service, elicit interest and desire, and get potential customers to act. Where marketing leaves off, sales can take over.

Sales need marketing to help them build trust with clients, bring new customers into the fold, and delight their audience.

Sales and marketing are both critical to the success of any business. They both have their own responsibilities, but they also work together to achieve one common goal: getting customers into your door and closing the deal.

Think of marketing and sales as a linear journey, building from marketing toward the sale. It is about more than just attracting prospects to a brand. It is informing prospects about your products and services and delighting them with the benefits of what your product or service can offer. If done successfully, sales can focus on a seamless sales process rather than a pitchy one.

Marketing helps sales by providing relevant content (like blog posts or videos) that shows prospects that your business understands their needs and wants. This builds trust between the buyer and seller, so when it’s time for a purchase decision, it’ll be easier for potential customers to choose you over competitors who didn’t build this relationship first. If marketing delights successfully, it allows sales to close the deal easier.

There are several ways that marketing can help sales.

Lead generation: Marketing can help generate leads by developing effective campaigns and initiatives that attract potential customers. By identifying and targeting the right audience, marketing can provide sales teams with a pool of qualified leads to pursue.
Customer education: Marketing can provide sales teams with valuable resources and content that can help educate potential customers about the products or services offered. These can include whitepapers, case studies, and product demos that help customers understand the value proposition of the offering.
Branding and positioning: Marketing can help create a strong brand identity and position the company effectively in the marketplace. By developing effective messaging and branding strategies, marketing can help sales teams differentiate their offering from the competition and create a strong value proposition.
Sales enablement: Marketing can provide sales teams with tools and resources that help them effectively engage with potential customers and close deals. These can include sales decks, product sheets, and other materials that help sales teams communicate the value proposition of the offering and address customer concerns.

Marketing has much more control over the customer’s perception, and it’s their job to ensure that everyone who comes into contact with your company knows what you do, why they should care, and how they can buy from you. Salespeople need more than just great products; they need effective messaging that resonates with potential customers so that when they’re ready to buy (or at least talk), they think of your company first and have a great sales/buying process.

While marketing is responsible for building your brand, sales drive revenue by closing deals. Sales can provide marketing with buyer personas so they know exactly who they’re targeting and what they need to do to promote their product or service successfully. This is important for shaping the messaging, getting the information to the proper channels that potential buyers interact with, and shifting campaigns or promotions.

Sometimes achieving the right balance between sales and marketing can be difficult.

Achieving the right balance between sales and marketing requires effective collaboration, open communication, and a shared understanding of goals and metrics. It can be challenging to achieve this balance due to the different perspectives, goals, and limited resources of the two functions.

However, when sales and marketing teams work together effectively, they can achieve better results for the business as a whole. The first step to finding that balance is understanding their differences to help determine how they can best work together.

There are several ways that sales and marketing can work together to achieve their common goal of bringing in revenue. Both teams need to know what the other is doing, but they also want their efforts to be mutually beneficial which means that each side needs a clear understanding of how they fit into the bigger picture and how they can work together effectively.

Communication: To achieve this common goal, it’s crucial that sales and marketing have clear communication between departments. This means sharing information about upcoming internal department goals and objectives.
Accessibility: Planning meetings and lead development plans should be accessible to both departments. The insights each department can provide are valuable to coordinating rollouts and goals. The strategic advice each department can offer can also shape messaging and deliverables and promotions, and other objectives.
Collaboration: Coordinate efforts through strategic initiatives or campaigns where you’re doing something special together to generate leads that drive revenue and awareness for both teams.
Aligned Goals and Metrics: Ensure that each team’s goals and metrics are aligned to support one another’s success. The second step is for both teams to commit fully to this new way of working together. This means rethinking how they do things and investing time developing new skill sets or learning from others who have already accomplished this goal.

Sales and marketing should work together on one common goal — growing business!

The most important thing to remember is that sales and marketing are not separate departments. They are one team, working together on a common goal: growing business!

Salespeople should consider how they can help the company grow by providing value through their efforts. Marketing teams should think about how they can help salespeople by developing marketing campaigns that help them do their job better and more efficiently.

Sales and marketing are both crucial to your company’s success. Without sales, you won’t have any customers; without marketing, you won’t be able to get those customers in the door.

When the two departments don’t work together, they can work against each other. But suppose they work together closely from the beginning of a campaign through its conclusion (or even beyond).

In that case, everyone will benefit from their combined efforts: prospects will have targeted, informative messaging addressing their needs or pain points, marketing campaigns will have lower costs, and seamless sales.

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Kathleen Marrero is the founder of First Fig Marketing & Consulting, a full-service digital marketing agency. She has successfully worked with entrepreneurs, small businesses, large corporations, and non-profits, consulting them on modern marketing strategies that they can implement to increase their reach and revenue online. She has been featured in numererous articles on marketing strategies, and is recognized for her digital marketing implementation.

For more information about Kathleen, visit: www.firstfigconsulting.com or https://www.linkedin.com/in/kathleen-marrero/

Kristin Gutierrez is a recognized expert in leadership development as an author, speaker, and coach. For two decades, she has worked internationally within Fortune 500 companies, as a leader in the localization industry, served on non-profits, and received globally recognized awards in thought leadership. Kristin provides valuable insights and actionable takeaways that can be immediately implemented to drive transformation within organizations. She has a proven track record of developing and implementing sales strategies and a unique ability to inspire and empower audiences. In addition, she has a passion for mentoring and developing team members, which has resulted in a high retention rate and revenue growth.

For more information about Kristin, visit: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mrskristingutierrez/