As important as a holistic business infrastructure is to success today, many companies haven’t broken free from the more traditional siloed approach, where departments and functions operate on their individual agendas and strategic initiatives, often with different goals. And it’s coming back to bite them right where it hurts—their bottom lines. New research from revenue execution firm Invoca affirms that—and explains how—poor alignment between B2C marketing, sales, and contact center teams is significantly impacting revenue growth.
The firm’s State of B2C Revenue Execution Report 2024, based on a survey conducted by independent market research firm TrendCandy, shows that while 9 in 10 sales and marketing leaders believe that alignment between their teams is critical to achieving revenue growth, only 1 in 10 report that their teams are very strongly aligned.
The connection between marketing and sales alignment and revenue is clear—86 percent of companies with strongly aligned sales and marketing teams expect revenue to increase significantly in 2024, and only 33 percent of those with poorly aligned teams report the same expectation.
Trust levels between B2C marketing and sales is low
Sales and marketing leaders know the impact of tight alignment, as nearly all (93 percent) of the survey respondents feel that low trust between marketing and sales significantly affects their company’s ability to grow revenue. However, B2C marketing and sales teams are suffering from a trust deficit. Only 19 percent of marketing leaders say they have very high trust in their contact center to effectively convert leads into sales, and just 22 percent of sales leaders say they have very high trust that marketing can deliver high-quality phone leads.
This naturally creates poor alignment between the teams that are ultimately responsible for driving revenue. Data finds that the top challenge to aligning sales and marketing teams is misaligned strategies, followed by poor data handling and inadequate communication. A lack of integrated sales and marketing technologies also made the top five. Without integrated technologies, it is difficult to share data, get a unified view of the customer, or align on KPIs and strategies.
Misalignment causes a poor visibility of the buying journey
The report’s results show that poorly aligned revenue teams create broken buying journeys, resulting in poor buyer experiences. Only 28 percent of respondents said they are very confident that they understand the full buying journey. This is due in part to a lack of ownership, as 70 percent said the buying journey has no clear owner in their organization.
When marketers have full access to contact center data, understanding of the buying journey jumps to 40 percent, demonstrating the importance of aligning marketing and contact center sales teams on the same data.
Marketers have difficulty attributing revenue to offline conversions
This study shows that when marketing and contact center sales teams can connect their investments to revenue, they can prove their performance, make smarter optimization decisions, and improve revenue growth. While 8 in 10 marketing leaders say that it’s very important to directly attribute revenue to marketing investments, 69 percent have inadequate attribution to tie conversions that happen on the phone to the marketing campaigns that drive the calls.
Only 7 percent of respondents said they can directly attribute revenue from phone sales to marketing programs, and nearly a quarter said a lack of access to contact center data was the culprit.
The result is an inability to impact revenue. Nearly 40 percent of respondents said that they have little or no control over revenue outcomes, which has far-reaching implications as they are the ones who are ultimately responsible for driving revenue.
“Marketing and sales jointly own revenue, but at most B2C companies, these teams are totally disconnected,” said Peter Isaacson, CMO at Invoca, in a news release. “This disconnect is all the more damaging in high-touch industries still reliant on human interaction to convert leads, such as healthcare, automotive, or home services. Revenue execution platforms directly address these pain points to foster better collaboration between teams and deliver an improved buyer experience.”
Invoca commissioned TrendCandy to survey 600 marketing, sales and contact center leaders to gain new insights on how marketing and sales teams are approaching cross-functional collaboration to align on revenue growth. Respondents are manager level or higher, serve B2C companies with 100+ employees, and report that 20 percent or more of their conversions occur on the phone. The margin error for this study is +/-4 percent at the 95 percent confidence level.
