Closing the Loop – Aligning Marketing and Sales

Traditionally, marketing teams generate leads, while sales teams close deals. With the web and the shift of the customer buying process and business-to-customer interactions, the lines between marketing and sales are blurred. Companies today know that they need to adapt, but how?

Growth-focused companies often wrestle with aligning marketing and sales to maximize revenue growth. A key goal is establishing a “service level agreement” between marketing and sales teams that defines both the required quantity and the characteristics of the ‘MQL” or Marketing Qualified Lead”. But there is more to it then that. Marketing and sales teams today, must work together to orchestrate the customer experience end-to-end and generate leads, nurture opportunities in the pipeline and ultimately convert sales. And, they need to track this end-to-end so they can attribute revenue to marketing programs and campaigns and see what is working and not working.

A useful framework to manage this end-to-end process is the “Closed Loop Marketing Architecture”.