Industrial marketing teams have traditionally played a static role in the procurement process, focusing their efforts on satisfying sales demands such as preparing product catalogues and creating support collateral. The evolution of digital marketing and industry 4.0 has blurred conventional lines between firm and consumer, making a human connection and personalized experiences more important than ever during the industrial purchase process. With fewer limits, your sales staff will have fewer opportunities to engage with a consumer before making a purchase decision, so make the most of those conversations.

Every day, the marketing team devotes a significant amount of time and resources to generating leads, which they then pass on to the sales team to close. The sales staff, on the other hand, frequently manages to 'close the deal' with only a handful of them. The bulk of leads are simply too difficult for the sales staff to handle, no matter how efficient or talented they are. This enrages the marketing department! They devote all of their time and resources to generating fresh leads, only to have them rejected by the sales team in the vast majority of cases. The answer is found in a phenomena known as lead qualification. According to it, not all leads are created equal when it comes to sales potential.

Every sales team has a certain budget to work with, this implies they must prioritize the leads provided by the marketing team based on their likelihood of becoming actual clients. Investing time and resources on leads that do not meet the lead qualifying standards for sales will not provide any rewards. Rather, it will reduce the sales and marketing department's overall efficiency. To meet this problem, every sales team has a technique for determining a lead's fitness or eligibility to become a successful sale.

The following are some methods for firms to discover the missing linkages between sales and marketing:-

1. Each Sale is More Efficient when Leads are Qualified –
Rather than following every lead it can discover blindly, lead qualifying criteria will allow the sales team to priorities time and effort based on the likelihood of each lead becoming a successful sale. This eliminates a lot of sales-related uncertainty.

2. Customers' Common Perceptions and Understanding –
CEOs must lead the charge in ensuring the proper insights are sought and a single view of customers is delivered in order to combine business, marketing, and customer strategies in a cohesive manner. When customer and buyer research is solely silo focused and strives to highlight already known knowledge about clients, a corporation can put itself in jeopardy. Many buyer persona efforts today, for example, are soloed in marketing and repeat well-known functional variables that sales has been working with for decades. In other words, it's turning into a buyer profiling exercise. Failure to give the depth of expertise that the C-Suite requires in order to be educated about how to expand corporate growth strategies and consumer strategies. To put it another way, it means failing to provide the missing connection.

3. Involve the Sales Team in the Marketing Strategy Development –
Allowing the sales team to participate in the creation of marketing campaigns allows them to have a better understanding of the marketing process, discover ideal customer profiles and key personas, and align both teams on your company's talking points.

4. Consider the Funnel in a Better Perspective –
Change your mindset from a linear process in which sales and marketing are at various phases of development, waiting for the lead baton to be passed. Both teams are responsible for the company's success, not just their own universe's outcomes.

5. Communicate Content with Sales –
Your sales team shouldn't have to look for excellent content that will help them complete more deals. Unfortunately, salespeople frequently complain about not having or being able to find the content they require. The first step is to organize content in a repository that is easy to access (particularly on mobile) for both teams and that is kept up to date.