Today, the world is a tech-enabled hyper-connected place where businesses are competing aggressively against each other for their share of customer attention. And since most purchases are digital now, a poor online customer experience almost immediately blacklists a business. In a world like this, a fragmented marketing and sales engine is not just inefficient, it is a big strategic risk that needs immediate attention. Why? 

Because customers expect seamless, personalized and connected buying experiences. But when revenue-focused teams operate in disconnected siloes, there’s always inconsistencies in messaging and error-led poor business decisions that lead to poor customer experiences.

The result? Lost deals! And that’s a big worry for CXOs. 

As a CXO, you want to create a business strategy that ensures a future with scalable growth, sustainable competitive advantage and continued resilience. In this article, I’ve listed down five detailed reasons why prioritizing a unified marketing and sales strategy is the key to this future.

Reason 1: Buyers expect a seamless purchase experience

Buyers do not differentiate between marketing and sales material - all they see is one brand. But when marketing and sales work separately, it creates a disjointed buying experience. 

The result? Lost deals, longer sales cycles, friction… you name it!

Countless times, I’ve had clients who have said they have lost deals because while sales is working on closing a deal at one price, marketing has simultaneously sent out a promotional offer for the same services at a different price. This discrepancy has led to trust issues costing the company a deal. 

While this kind of situation is unlikely in a smaller company, as the business scales, it will get more and more prominent if the marketing and sales engines are not in perfect sync. 

Reason 2:Unified data is better data. And better data is better decision making

When I was working at Hubspot, I had at least a dozen calls per week where a client would say something like “oh, we use Google Analytics for our website performance data, we have an SQL database that manages the customer data, our ads data is managed by the individual providers like LinkedIn, Google and Facebook, our sales folks have a sales call every week where they update deal notes on a running Excel spreadsheet and the customer activity would be managed on Pipedrive CRM”

Do you see the fragmentation of key customer journey data?

With this kind of technology stack, it is virtually impossible to do any kind of marketing attribution or figure out any gaps in the buying process. Leadership is left with making strategic business decisions off incomplete, inaccurate and unclean data. 

In order to effectively allocate funds, drive strategic initiatives and see clear business results, a CXO needs clean and unified data giving them a crystal clear picture of the state of affairs. 

Reason 3:
With AI in the picture, you need a unified foundation

Just yesterday, a client of mine said “I want to use AI to reduce the load on my sales team - I want predictive lead scoring to help my sales team go after the right accounts in order of priority. We would like to create automated AI prospecting to help reps achieve higher meeting booking rates” 

It’s getting clearer that AI is potentially an aid that can boost the sales capabilities of a human multifold - if used properly. The reason this client was able to expect all this is because they already had a unified marketing and sales engine where all the data is connected to one source of truth. 

In order for a business to leverage the power of AI, data needs to be flowing seamlessly across the customer lifecycle. 

Reason 4: Accelerated Revenue Growth

There is clear research today that removing friction-filled siloes achieves higher win rates, faster deal velocity and a more consistent and predictable revenue growth. 

Last year, I remember encountering a CXO who was struggling with basic information like top 10 deals at risk in the next quarter. Imagine a scenario where marketing and sales KPIs feed into each other rather than being in siloes. If that had been the case, the CXO would very clearly know the 10 deals that are at risk next quarter because marketing did not do a good job of account based targeted marketing or sales has not had new leads speak to them from these accounts in over a week. 

Yes, I’m making up a scenario - but there is no denying the fact that the optimal state is when marketing and sales work towards a shared and unified goal of revenue generation, instead of siloed goals of “generate leads” and “close leads”, respectively.

Which brings me to my last and most important reason as to why CXOs should prioritize unification of marketing and sales…

Reason 5: It’s a CXO imperative - not a departmental project

Days of delegating marketing and sales alignment to middle management are gone. A unified marketing and sales strategy needs executive sponsorship - because if a CXO is not aware of the full customer lifecycle, it cannot be expected of the individual growth leaders either. 

When CXOs take the decision from the top, it sends a positive signal that rallies the marketing and sales troops together. For example, a marketing manager is more motivated to drive quality leads to sales and also check up on their closure if a CXO holds the marketing manager accountable for revenue - not just top of the funnel leads. 

Final Thought

A unified marketing and sales strategy is no longer a luxury - it is a necessity. As a CXO, investing in integrated all-in-one systems like Hubspot and prioritizing realignment of marketing and sales teams are some of the highest caliber business decisions you can make…

And yes, that change can be daunting. The inertia can make you feel like the status quo outweighs the benefits of the efforts for this major technological transformation. But at Vera Verto Consulting, we make that change easier. 

Reach out to us for a more detailed discussion, especially if you feel like your team needs to break free from the shackles of a fragmented system.