New data reveals that 90% of B2C marketing and sales leaders cite team alignment as key to growth, yet only 10% actually achieve it.
Invoca, the leader in revenue execution platforms, released The State of B2C Revenue Execution Report 2024, the first data report to reveal how poor alignment between B2C marketing, sales, and contact center teams is significantly impacting revenue growth. The report 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% of companies with strongly aligned sales and marketing teams expect revenue to increase significantly in 2024, and only 33% 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%) 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% of marketing leaders say they have very high trust in their contact center to effectively convert leads into sales, and just 22% 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% 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% 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%, 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% have inadequate attribution to tie conversions that happen on the phone to the marketing campaigns that drive the calls.
Only 7% 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% 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.
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“Marketing and sales jointly own revenue, but at most B2C companies, these teams are totally disconnected,” said Peter Isaacson, CMO at Invoca. “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.”
Revenue Execution Platforms Key to Improving Today’s Buyer Journey
Invoca’s revenue execution platform enables revenue teams to connect customer buying journey data across the marketing team that engages customers and the sales teams that close the deals. By using a comprehensive revenue execution platform, revenue teams can finally connect their marketing investments directly to revenue, improve digital engagement, and drive higher-quality leads.