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Once upon a time, salespeople used to tell customers what they wanted and why they wanted it. None of us needed the infamous Pet Rock from the 1970s, but millions of common stones poorly dressed up as pet avatars were sold by this method.

Times have changed. Sales no longer controls the flow of information in the buying process -- the customer does. If customers have a question about a product or service, they can Google their answer and receive it instantly, privately, and from a variety of sources. Customer: 1. Sales: 0. But the game’s not over.

One of the most significant consequences of this change is that marketing teams now play an equal role to Sales in new customer acquisition and have a huge and increasing influence on the sales pipeline and the sales outcome.

This is what we mean by Sales and Marketing alignment: when Sales and Marketing work together to improve the process for customer acquisition (lead generation, lead nurturing, lead qualification and sales closing).

How Can Marketing Help Sales Close More Leads?

They key is for Marketing to understand and embrace the specific buying process used by prospective sales prospects. Not a dreamed up process that Marketing wants the prospect to use … the real thing. This is called the buyer’s journey, which represents the three essential stages in every buying process: awareness, consideration, and decision.

The awareness stage addresses a buyer who is just becoming aware of a problem or topic and is interested in learning more. A buyer in the consideration stage has identified a problem, but is conducting research and considering various solutions. A buyer in thedecision stage has had objections addressed and is ready to make a decision on a solution.

Part of the job of inbound marketers is to gain insight into the buyer’s need for information at every stage of the journey. Marketing can then pass the knowledge gained about each prospect’s unique needs, priorities and objections on to Sales so that Sales can engage qualified leads with greater insight and understanding of the specific requirements to close the sale.

For example, you wouldn’t want Sales trying to sell to a lead in the awareness stage because that lead is only looking for helpful information. Trying to close this lead is tantamount to the proverbial car sales person pouncing on the person just entering the lot for the first time -- pointing them towards relevant blog posts or a white paper download would be more appropriate.

In an aligned organization, it’s Marketing’s job to help Sales better assess the qualified leads they get and find the information that would be most valuable to them.

The report below is an example of what we show to our clients’ sales teams when identifying which leads are worth the time to sell to. This is the tool we use at our agency to educate Sales on the process of where a lead is at in the buyer’s journey. This is the sort of information that Sales is interested in because it allows them to see which leads are worth approaching as far as selling and which leads need more nurturing.