Why Sales & Marketing alignment is a must do, and must have for Microsoft Partners

Fundamentally, the activity we do in marketing is pre-sales.

In order to evolve and deliver cut-through messaging, Marketing teams need to have context of what customers want. This is often derived from the conversations salespeople are having directly with potential customers – so it’s imperative the two work together.

All good businesses must have good sales, so sales and marketing alignment is a must-do and must-have if you want to grow your business.

Sales & Marketing in B2B

When dealing with B2B organisations, sales cycles are often long, and the typical customer of a Microsoft Partner is making a large investment in technology solutions or services. This means they will take their time and be choosy over who their provider will be.

Salespeople can’t spend a lot of time generating leads in this environment because a relatively small amount of them will ever convert. Instead, it makes sense for marketing to qualify leads and educate customers so that salespeople can focus most of their effort on prospects with the highest potential.

Marketing activities are many and varied, and getting an offer into market may include any of the following activities;

• Inbound marketing
• Account based marketing
• Channel
• Sales outreach (phone, email, LinkedIn InMail, Sales Navigator)
• Paid advertising
• Print distribution
• Social Media campaign
• Search Engine Marketing
• Influencer

What’s best for Microsoft Partner Marketing?

We are not here to tell you HOW you should take your message to market, you are more likely to know what form of marketing activity will work, or has worked in the past for your organisation. If not – please reach out and we can offer some more tailored guidance.

But, if you’re looking for a quick win, tools like LinkedIn Sales Navigator allow you to take your target customer list and start building your ideal client list. This is WHO you will market to. You can segment your target accounts and identify role titles within them you will chase after.

What’s next?

Since you’ve made it this far you might be interested to know more about our SalesPlay On-Ramp™ Program? If we're right, shoot us an email and we'll send through all the details.