There’s nothing wrong with a little healthy competition to elevate your colleagues, but I’ve seen many instances of sales and marketing teams creating conflict to their own detriment.

Generally speaking, since sales teams drive revenue and marketing teams drive leads, overlap exists between the two functions. Many see this as a source of friction, necessitating a strategy for aligning both teams.

While “alignment’” would be an upgrade for most organizations and many successful companies have already adopted a similar model and approach, Qualified helps move sales and marketing into a more productive relationship by going further than simply aligning the two departments; Qualified helps integrate sales and marketing functions.

Integrated sales & marketing functions

When sales and marketing are fully integrated, boundaries are blurred resulting in both groups redesigning the relationship to share more than just an overarching strategy; they share structures, systems, processes, and rewards. The departments engage in joint planning and training sessions. Shared metrics, which are mutually agreed upon, are developed and implemented to increase collaboration and reduce tension.

Adding Qualified to your tech stack enables companies to move past alignment and toward sales and marketing integration.

Picture a Venn diagram for sales and marketing functions–and their systems–with Qualified’s set of technologies and processes to help B2B companies generate more pipeline as the intersection:

Redefining the “handshake” between sales & marketing

Here’s a meaningful example of successfully integrated sales and marketing functions: Eric Sikola, Qualified President and COO, established a Pipeline Council which looks at only one number of qualified leads (QLs). We do not separate QLs by sales and marketing at Qualified; we only have one number as a sales and marketing team as they’re all considered pipeline.

(Psssst. Want to hear more about Qualified’s Pipeline Council? Register for Pipeline Summit, a virtual event taking place on November 10th from 10:00 am to 1:00 pm PST. We’ll tell you all about our weekly meeting and what we share to stay integrated.)

How much is sales and marketing misalignment costing your company? A better question is how much more value would your company be able to create and provide if its sales and marketing functions were integrated?

Utilizing Qualified as part of a company’s modern B2B tech stack enables changes to traditional sales and marketing functions to continue to evolve.