Sales and marketing alignment, starting with one definition

AED 15,000 to AED 60,000 covers most of what we are asked to build. The number moves on how many teams and regions are involved, whether closed-loop reporting needs building in the CRM, and whether ongoing facilitation is included. Anything quoted before those are known is a guess. We scope first, then price, and the scope document is yours whether or not you proceed. These are market ranges rather than a fixed rate card — the proposal carries the real figure.

Four things, in order. Write down one definition of a qualified lead that both teams sign. Agree a service level that binds both sides — quality from marketing, response speed from sales. Close the loop technically so outcome data reaches marketing. Then run one meeting with one set of numbers. The first of those four resolves most of the argument on its own.

The workshop is the start and it is not the deliverable. Without the closed-loop reporting built in the CRM afterwards, everyone agrees in the room and reverts within a quarter, because marketing still cannot see which campaigns produced customers.

Being straight: this is not an established sales framework. Several articles define it in incompatible ways — three prospects a day, three touches, three minutes of research — and it appears in search suggestions because content sites wrote about it rather than because sales teams use it. If someone quotes it at you, ask which version they mean and where it comes from.

Another one worth treating carefully. There is no single agreed set, and different trainers offer different lists. The recurring useful ideas underneath are qualifying properly, understanding the customer's actual situation, and being clear about the next step. Those are worth doing; the acronym is not a standard.

Whoever owns the marketing number and whoever owns the sales number, plus one person from each team who does the day-to-day work. Four to six people. It does not work with marketing alone and it does not work delegated downwards.

The workshop and the written definitions are two to three weeks including drafting and sign-off. The closed-loop reporting depends on your CRM state and typically adds two to four weeks.

Then start with the numbers rather than the relationship. In most cases the hostility is downstream of both teams being measured on things that conflict, and it eases considerably once they share a definition and a report. Where it does not, that is a management issue and we will say so rather than facilitating around it.

Speed to first contact, the proportion of marketing leads that sales accepts, and cost per customer by source. The second one is the clearest single indicator and almost nobody tracks it before this work.

Minutes rather than hours for inbound enquiries, and the drop-off after the first hour is steep. The first step is usually just measuring it, because most teams considerably underestimate their own current time.

Yes, and it is common. This is process and systems work. We do it for clients whose campaigns run elsewhere, and we work with their existing agency on the definitions.