8 Tips to Increase Close Rate by Aligning Marketing and Sales

1. Jointly create your ideal customer profile

Unlike the term “target customer,” which describes all potential customers who might buy your products or services, ideal customer profile (ICP) defines the most valuable buyers who are ready to buy now.

Jointly creating an ICP ensures both sales and marketing are aligned on who their holy-grail clients are. That said, given their proximity to prospects, your sales team plays a critical role in surfacing insights necessary to identify the attributes of ideal customers and bring focus to pipeline generation.

How to develop an ICP

• Conduct joint workshops: Hold a collaborative workshop with both teams to discuss their experiences with prospects and create a draft ICP.
• Analyze your best customers: Both teams should analyze the top customers to identify common characteristics and pain points. Since your sales team interacts directly with customers, they can help identify customers who find the most value in your offerings and have a strong relationship with your business.
• Update your ICP regularly: Use your ICP document as a living document, and have both teams review and update it regularly. This practice ensures your strategies remain relevant with evolving market trends and customer needs.
• Use an account-based strategy: Focus your sales and marketing efforts on a few potential high-value targets. This approach has helped 41% of businesses increase win rates and close bigger deals. ^[2]

2. Qualify leads with the BANT framework

Improve lead qualification based on the BANT criteria — budget, authority, need, and timeline. This framework assesses leads’ readiness to buy by evaluating their budget, decision-making authority, need for your solution, and purchase timeline.

Typically used by sales professionals during discovery calls, marketing teams can also employ the BANT framework for lead qualification. In fact, 75% of B2B buyers prefer to transact without any direct sales interaction, often relying on self-guided research through websites and other digital assets.^[1] This demands more marketing involvement in attracting, nurturing, and qualifying leads. By assessing leads based on the BANT framework before passing them to sales, marketing can boost conversion potential by giving sales the information they need to close deals.

How to use the BANT framework to qualify leads

• Educate your teams: Initiate training sessions to familiarize your sales and marketing teams with the BANT framework. Use real-world examples to illustrate how this framework can be applied in their respective roles.
• Create targeted content: Have marketing craft focused content and campaigns, such as blog posts addressing common budget-related objections or email campaigns highlighting product value for the various decision makers involved in purchase. Additionally, monitor lead engagement with the created assets to gather BANT indicators for each lead. 
• Use CRM software: Implement a customer relationship management (CRM) system to record lead interactions (e.g., website behavior, form responses, email exchanges) and their frequency. Configure the CRM to alert your sales team when a lead reaches a specific engagement score.

3. Use behavioral lead scoring to understand buyer needs

While the BANT framework focuses on four criteria to qualify sales interactions, lead scoring considers a buyer’s position in the sales funnel and their engagement level with your product to identify when they’re ready to be handed to sales. 

To improve the quality of leads passed from marketing to sales, develop a robust lead scoring system that goes beyond static indicators such as firmographics (e.g., industry, company size) and includes behavioral attributes such as digital engagement. 

To ascertain if a lead is ready for a demo or further meeting, focus on capturing the following information:

• The challenges they are experiencing and if they need your product or service
• The type of solution they are looking for
• If they have a budget allocated to invest in solving the problem

For instance, a prospect who frequently visits your pricing page may receive a higher score than one who has only read a blog post. This prospect is likely a high-scoring lead that marketing can prioritize to pass on to sales. 

How to implement behavioral lead scoring

• Use content consumption as an indicator: Your sales and marketing teams should jointly establish parameters to assess a lead’s readiness to buy based on their engagement with various content types. If a lead isn’t ready, marketing can continue to nurture them, while sales can provide insights into what content works best for potential buyers.
• Analyze past conversions: Make both teams review past conversions to identify high-conversion potential leads.
• Utilize effective buyer enablement content: Have marketing focus on creating hard-to-find, valuable content, such as benchmark reports, that enable buyers to compare your offerings with other available options to make informed decisions. This practice increases lead engagement and boosts the credibility of your lead scores. 
• Create engagement-based segments: Marketing can classify leads based on engagement levels, while sales can provide insights into behaviors that indicate a lead is moving closer to purchase. Your scoring categories could include “unengaged” (no engagement with content in the past three months); “engaged” (consumed some top-of-funnel content not directly related to a purchase); “engaged, hot” (consuming more content, including at least one piece related to buying); and “engaged, sales-ready” (consuming content related to navigating a purchase and requesting a meeting). 

4. Leverage social proof to build reliability and trust

Use social proof, such as user reviews, to build trust throughout your marketing and sales funnel. Prospects are more likely to be persuaded about the value of your product or service by reading their peers’ experiences. User reviews are the most valuable content for software buyers across their purchase journey (see the image below).

Social proof can also include customer testimonials, case studies, and user-generated content (e.g., social media posts) that strengthen sales pitch decks and marketing content.

How to use social proof

• Collect customer testimonials: Ask marketing to actively reach out to customers to capture their experiences. Your sales team can then repurpose the captured reviews and testimonials in their pitch decks or utilize them to identify upselling or cross-selling opportunities.
• Create customer success stories: Have marketing identify a few of the most satisfied customers to develop detailed case studies or customer success stories. Use these testimonials and case studies in your email campaigns, landing pages, and sales conversations to authenticate your claims. 
• Create product pages on popular review platforms: Maximize the impact of customer reviews by creating free profiles on Gartner Digital Markets’ network of software review platforms — Capterra, Software Advice, GetApp, and UpCity — that are visited by thousands of in-market buyers actively looking for solutions like yours. Invite customers to post reviews for your product or service on these sites.

5. Develop an effective objection-handling strategy

Objections need not be impediments. When handled adeptly, objections can be used to dispel misconceptions, convey your offering’s distinct advantages, and strengthen your relationship with prospects.

A unified approach between sales and marketing can ensure both units handle objections effectively through consistent information sharing. This collaboration is especially crucial as businesses will likely become more cautious and thorough in software spending. Our 2023 Global Software Buying Trends report shows that 69% of small and midsize businesses (SMBs) intend to invest more in software to enhance operational efficiencies despite budget cuts.

How to create an objection-handling strategy

• Create an objection-handling document: Compile a document listing common buyer objections and their responses. Ensure this document is easily accessible and regularly updated by both sales and marketing teams.
• Facilitate open dialogue between sales and marketing: Your sales team should communicate common objections they face during interactions with prospects. The marketing unit can then create content to address those objections head-on, making it easier for sales to convince buyers.
• Position your offering as a must-have: Have both sales and marketing position your product or service as a must-have for buyers. Emphasize how it solves a crucial business problem or delivers significant value, making it indispensable for buyers.
• Train your sales team: Conduct regular sessions to train your sales reps on handling objections. Use role-play exercises to ensure they are capable of adapting responses for different follow-ups. You can also involve marketing in this exercise to familiarize them with the questions customers commonly ask.

6. Follow up promptly

Timely follow-ups are crucial for successful closures. They keep your product or service at the top of prospects’ minds and show your commitment to addressing their needs.

Collaboration between sales and marketing can ensure informative, yet not intrusive, follow-ups. Marketing can enable sales with relevant product-based content and set up automated email sequences to engage leads promptly after they express interest, paving the way for sales to step in with a personalized touch once the lead is sufficiently warmed up.

How to follow up with prospects

• Standardize your outreach plan: Implement a regularized outreach plan, such as following up one day after the initial contact, then again a week later, and so on. This ensures consistency in your follow-ups and timely communication.
• Use marketing automation tools: These tools can help set up automated processes for follow-up activities. Consider welcome emails, product benefits emails, regular newsletters sharing case studies, and invitations for free trials or product demos. 
• Measure prospect engagement with lead scoring: Prioritize lead follow-ups by using lead scoring signals. By determining which leads are ready to be contacted, both sales and marketing can collaboratively concentrate their efforts on nurturing and converting the most engaged prospects.
• Use renewal periods: Leverage renewal periods to showcase improved features and updates. You can also offer personalized demos and targeted email campaigns with special discounts or incentives to boost customer loyalty.

7. Add a sense of urgency

Creating a sense of urgency prompts action from prospects. It plays on the principle of scarcity, making buyers feel they might miss out if they don’t act fast.

While this is an effective strategy to nudge prospects to act, sales and marketing must work together to align on messaging that goes out to buyers — through digital and in-person interactions. That said, any urgency conveyed should be genuine and not come off as a high-pressure sales tactic.

How to instill a sense of urgency among prospects

• Craft compelling calls to action (CTAs): Write CTA statements using words such as “now,” “today,” or “limited time.” Instead of a generic “learn more,” opt for specific CTAs such as “Discover our unique features,” clarifying to prospects what they stand to gain by clicking the CTA.
• Design limited-time offers: Based on sales insights about what appeals to prospects, create limited-time offers, such as discounts, bonus features, or special packages available for a short period. 
• Highlight available slots in marketing campaigns: In your marketing campaigns, mention, if applicable, the availability of open slots for a training session or a free trial. This tactic subtly communicates scarcity and prompts action. 
• Showcase real-time updates on a webpage: Create a webpage that shows the number of people currently viewing the same offer or customers who have used your software. Viewing actual numbers creates a sense of demand and urgency.

8. Measure, learn, and improve

The key to improving sales conversion rate lies in executing strategies, measuring their impact and effectiveness, learning from their outcomes, and making necessary improvements. Both sales and marketing teams should regularly review their performance and draw lessons from successes and failures.

For instance, a successful marketing campaign may warrant replication. Similarly, if sales reps consistently lose deals at a particular stage, they may require additional training or resources

How to measure, learn, and improve

• Conduct review sessions: Review won and lost deals to identify trends and commonalities among buyers. Understand what they have in common or the reason for lost deals.
• Hold quarterly meetings with sales and marketing leaders: Align them on joint goals, milestones, and responsibilities. This approach enables seamless sharing of important information and data between teams.
• Document the joint goals: Make the goals both qualitative and quantitative. For example, one goal could be leveraging marketing webinars to drive better quality sales conversations, aiming for a 20% surge in sales-driven attendees in Q1.
• Celebrate shared accomplishments: Celebrating success boosts morale and reinforces the importance of sales and marketing collaboration.

Increase close rate through collaborative effort

To sum up, winning more deals is about teamwork. Leverage the strengths of both sales and marketing teams, break down silos, and foster a culture of shared goals and mutual success. It’s about creating a synergy between your teams, allowing you to access richer data, adapt as needed, and innovate in a rapidly changing marketplace.

Focus on getting sales-qualified leads so your sales team can act quickly to close deals. Generate a steady stream of qualified leads with Gartner Digital Markets’ Sales-Qualified Lead Generation and free your sales team to work on your best-fit prospects.

Sources

1. Improve Deal Quality by Orchestrating Sales and Marketing Efforts, Gartner
2. Align Sales and Marketing To Create a Data-Driven Target Account Prioritization Process, Gartner