Sales and marketing teams often struggle to work together effectively. In one Harvard Business Review survey, 87 percent of the terms sales and marketing use to describe each other are negative.
Key benefits of sales and marketing working together
When sales and marketing align, the results are measurable. Philip Kotler's Harvard Business Review study shows companies see:
Performance metrics improve across the board
Sales cycles are shorter
Market-entry costs go down
The cost of sales is lower
How to develop marketing and sales collaboration
1. Make sure they are on the same page when it comes to leads
Start by defining what counts as a lead. Sales and marketing need a shared definition and scoring system to prioritize the same opportunities.
Most lead scoring models miss one critical signal: whether this person used your product before at a previous company. That gap leaves high-potential leads stuck at the top of your funnel.
What qualifies as a lead?
You need a shared definition of what qualifies as a lead. Without it, marketing generates leads that sales won't follow up on or can't close.
Many businesses adopt the following definitions:
Marketing-Qualified Leads (MQL): the prospect has shown some level of interest that tells marketing this is a genuine lead.
Sales-Accepted Leads (SAL): sales accepts the lead and agrees to follow up.
Sales-Qualified Leads (SQL): leads that have passed qualification by sales, and are moving into an opportunity stage.
Definition requires a complementary scoring system that helps sales and marketing prioritize high-quality leads. Sales and marketing need to agree on the scoring system that helps sales and marketing prioritize high-quality leads.
That brings us to Lead Scoring.
What is lead scoring?
Lead scoring keeps sales and marketing aligned by assigning point values to each lead based on fit and engagement.
You assign point values to each lead based on their profile and behavior.
A lead’s score is a combination of “Fit” (professional information) and “Interest” (their engagement with your website and brand). Low interest but good fit? Keep nurturing. Good fit and high interest? Sales should reach out immediately.
Source: Hubspot
You can score your leads based on multiple attributes, including professional information and how they’ve engaged with your website and brand across the internet.
FIT
Demographic: job title, education level, gender, age...
Company: industry, size, revenue, location, tech stacks...
Detracting scores for those who are not in the targeted demographic (e.g. students, interns) or if you detect it as spam (e.g. personal email address)
INTEREST
Content engagement: demo request, email engagement, webinar attendance, live chats, content download, social media engagement…
Different points for different types of content (e.g. visiting product pages should get more points than visiting the homepage)
Lead score decay: detract scores if the lead has not re-engaged with your website or content after a certain time.
(For customer marketing who focuses on upsell and product engagement, lead scoring can also include support tickets, chats, product usage data, etc.)
Most scoring models miss one key signal: did this person use your product at their last company?
What are “Previous User” leads?
When a lead already knows your product, reps spend less time pitching and more time discovering how it fits their new company's needs.
This often increases deal size and shortens sales cycles—these buyers are more likely to skip or shorten trials.
When someone changes jobs and uses a new email address, you lose all record of their previous engagement. Your systems treat them as a brand new lead.
Think of this like the cross-device challenge B2C marketers solved years ago—tracking one user across multiple devices. Today, cross-device targeting is a new normal for B2C marketers. It provides a bread crumb trail of each user, offering more insights on the interests and preferences of potential customers. This enables B2C marketers to target each user continuously and more effectively across all devices.
B2B teams need the same capability: cross-account targeting that tracks contacts across job changes, especially previous users.
When a “new” lead engages with your website but is a previous user, they should receive additional “points” to help them accelerate quickly through the MQL-SAL-SQL funnel.
Add 'Previous User' to your lead scoring criteria. You'll generate more high-quality MQLs that are easier to close and drive more revenue.
2. Implement cross-account targeting
To do this at scale, you need a sales intelligence platform that automatically tracks job changes and delivers accurate contact data directly into your CRM.
First, sync your user base into your CRM. Work with Product and Engineering to include user names, email addresses, and product usage data. This includes user names, email addresses, product usage data (if possible) to identify power vs. casual users.
When evaluating vendors, look for three things:
Automated & Integrated With Your Existing Environment
Look for automation that tracks job changes and updates your CRM automatically. The tool should work with your existing lead routing—not force you to rebuild it. Choose vendors that integrate seamlessly with your existing tools and processes, allowing your reps and ops team to maintain their current workflows.
Frequency
Job change changes are powerful buying signals. Reach buyers when they're new to their role and need to drive change—you're 74% more likely to win, according to InsideSales, as per InsideSales. Look for vendors that update your CRM monthly or quarterly, depending on your sales cycle. Wait longer than three months and you'll miss the buying window.
Data Accuracy
Reps need accurate work emails and phone numbers to work these leads. Most vendors struggle with data accuracy for contacts in their first 90 days at a new company. Verify email deliverability during your trial—especially for recent job changes. Verify their data quality during your trials.
What is UserGems?
UserGems tracks your customers and prospects for job changes, then automatically surfaces them as new opportunities in your CRM with accurate contact data. The right sales intelligence platform makes this automatic.
When your customers change jobs, UserGemsautomatically creates new lead records in your CRM with updated contact information. Your reps can reach out while competitors are still searching for the right contact.
Watch UserGems Demo Video Here
