Contact

Step-by-Step Guide to Marketing and Sales Integration

Thanks to the online environment in which we now collaborate, integrating sales and marketing has become relatively straightforward.

That said, such a transition still comes with its own set of challenges. In this article, we share insights to help accelerate the integration between marketing and sales.

Here are the key factors for successfully aligning marketing with sales:

  • Prepare your people
  • Set up the integration project
  • Define clear objectives
  • Funnel analysis and lead qualification
  • Supportive systems and shared agreements
  • Ongoing follow-up and progress tracking

1. Preparing Your People

It may seem obvious, but your team first needs to embrace the idea of closer collaboration—eventually leading to full integration. Without their support, the process becomes an uphill battle.

Below, we outline the steps that make integrating marketing and sales not just a successful project, but also an enjoyable one.

2. Setting Up the Marketing and Sales Integration Project

Once your people are comfortable with the idea of working more closely together, it’s time to share the project plan with them. That plan—developed in advance, ideally with our support—outlines exactly what you want to achieve and how you’ll measure success.

Examples of measurable goals include:

  • A monthly commercial meeting to evaluate and develop concrete actions;
  • Collaboratively building and optimising sales funnels, where account management and marketing work hand in hand;
  • Defining Ideal Customer Profiles together, so both marketing and sales have a clear and shared view of their target audience.
View our approach

3. Setting Clear Goals—Together

By now, you’ve defined the desired outcome of your marketing and sales integration. The next step is to align with the people who will make it happen. Together, you set shared goals that directly contribute to a successful integration.

And don’t forget the fun element—team-building matters. The right mix of offsite activities and collaboration sessions creates energy, trust, and shared ownership of results.

4. Funnel Analysis and Lead Qualification

At the end of the day, it all comes down to leads. By regularly reviewing your funnel (or pipeline) and conversion rates, you can more accurately determine what’s needed from both marketing and sales to keep it well-filled and productive.

Here are just a few of the key areas to consider:

  • Defining and agreeing on what constitutes:
    • a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) and a Sales Qualified Lead (SQL);
    • a highly qualified versus low-quality lead;
    • realistic conversion rates, based on benchmarks and your own data.
  • Identifying your actual conversion rate and where there’s room to improve it;
  • Evaluating the health of your Customer Lifetime Value (CLV);
  • Understanding churn levels, why customers drop off, and how to reduce it;
  • Calculating how many contact moments it takes—on average—to close a deal.

There are, of course, many more dimensions you can analyse in your sales funnel. But once you’ve done this work, it becomes easier to drive commercial success—and, in turn, accelerate growth.

5. Supportive Systems and Clear Agreements

Naturally, the agreements you make must be clearly documented—especially when it comes to defining roles and responsibilities. Who does what, and how do you ensure consistency?

Here are some key areas to assign ownership for:

  • Creating the necessary content for online channels—think: copy, video, animation, photography, etc.;
  • Setting up and coordinating marketing campaigns;
  • Managing branding and ensuring consistent visibility for your brand;
  • Maintaining accurate contact information within the CRM system;
  • Planning and timing the right touchpoints along the customer journey.

Also important: define which KPIs you will track and how they will be visualised in your dashboards. Clear accountability and transparency here will improve collaboration and accelerate results.

6. Structured Follow-Up and Progress Monitoring

Without quality follow-up, everything mentioned above risks falling apart. As a continuation of point 5, you’ll need clarity on how frequently and in what format you’ll review progress and actions.

All of the previous steps contribute to a successful marketing and sales integration. But without a structured approach to reviewing results and refining your strategy, the project may slowly lose momentum. Collaboration begins to break down, finger-pointing emerges, and silos start to form again.

Quarterly Check-ins for Marketing and Sales Integration

We strongly recommend setting aside half a day each quarter to realign, sharpen, and refocus your commercial team. Because in addition to your own efforts, market dynamics and external conditions also influence your success.