How to create sales and marketing SLAs for B2B organizations

Is your B2B organization struggling to meet revenue goals? Are you investing a lot of money in sales and marketing, yet don't you feel like each one is progressing to the beat of their own drum?

These challenges are not unusual. In many B2B organizations, inconsistencies between these two critical departments lead to missed opportunities, inefficiency, and lack of growth. Implementing sales and marketing service level agreements (SLAs) is key to bridging this gap and achieving sustainable and coordinated results.

In fact, according to HubSpot's research, the following companies are actively entering into sales and marketing service level agreements (SLAs).

• The trend of improving ROI compared to the previous year is 34% higher
• There is a 21% higher chance that budget allocations will increase,
• The trend of hiring additional sales personnel to meet demand is 31% higher.

In this blog post, we'll explore how sales and marketing SLAs can transform B2B organizations, promote seamless collaboration between sales and marketing teams, increase lead generation, and ultimately drive business growth.

The essential role of sales and marketing SLAs

A sales and marketing service level agreement (SLA) is a formal, written agreement between sales and marketing teams within an organization. Clarify expectations, roles, and responsibilities for both teams, and outline common goals, objectives, and key performance indicators (KPIs). It is often consistent with the definition of a marketing certified lead (MQL). Once the marketing department identifies and qualifies leads that meet the MQL definition, they are handed over to the sales team. The sales team is then responsible for processing those leads within a set amount of time.

But an effective sales and marketing SLA isn't just a document; it's the foundation for a strong partnership between sales and marketing teams. SLAs promote better communication, accountability, and trust by clarifying the expectations, roles, and responsibilities of both teams.

A clearly defined SLA not only strengthens the sales-marketing relationship, but it also directly affects the company's bottom line. Teams can work together towards common goals and objectives to ensure that prospects are properly managed, followed up, and eventually converted into customers. Its implementation experience, lead conversion rate will increase, revenue will increase, and business growth will accelerate.

Failure to implement SLAs forces sales and marketing teams to collaborate without a roadmap. In fact, in our experience, the biggest reason for sales and marketing discrepancies is lack of SLAs.

Establishing buyer personas and ideal client profiles

The basis for creating sales and marketing SLAs is establishing a clearly defined buyer persona and ideal client profile (ICP). This kind of target audience representation will guide the efforts of both sales and marketing teams, and everyone will be able to work on attracting and engaging the right prospects.

A buyer persona is a fictional representation of an ideal customer, such as demographics, job responsibilities, issues, and goals. An ideal customer profile, on the other hand, indicates the type of company that best suits your products and services.

By clearly matching target audiences for both individuals and businesses, marketing departments can capture high-quality prospects and tailor sales departments to act on them. This collaboration not only enhances the overall effectiveness of demand generation efforts, but also reduces friction and misunderstandings between the two departments.

Defining and Identifying Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs)

As mentioned above, an important aspect of sales and marketing SLAs is the concept of a marketing certified lead (MQL). MQL is a lead that is considered likely to become a customer based on specific criteria agreed upon by both the sales team and marketing team in the SLA. By clearly identifying MQL, sales teams can focus on the most promising leads, and marketing teams can develop development strategies.

Lead scoring is a valuable tool for identifying MQLs. We assign points to leads based on their suitability (demographics, company statistics, budget) and activity (engagement with content, websites, and marketing campaigns). By combining fit scores and activity scoring, you can determine which leads are likely to convert and prioritize them accordingly.

Platforms like HubSpot allow marketing departments to score leads as they run marketing campaigns. This allows sales reps to handle leads in the same system, making closed-loop reporting possible, and mutual visualization of each other's work.

Set clear goals and targets for sales and marketing teams

To effectively implement sales and marketing SLAs, it's important to set clear goals and targets for both teams. These goals should be set based on team maturity, past performance, and lead generation drivers, and should be realistic and attainable.

Examples of goals and targets include:

• Next quarter, we will increase the number of marketing qualified leads (MQL) by 20%.
• Increase your conversion rate from MQL to Sales Qualified Leads (SQL) by 15% over the next 6 months.
• Improve sales team response times to new SQL to less than 2 business hours.

By regularly reviewing and updating these goals, continuous improvements and adjustments can be made between sales and marketing teams. This process fosters a culture of accountability and helps foster an environment where both departments work together to achieve common goals.

Takeover process: transfer leads between sales and marketing

A smooth transition between sales and marketing is essential to increase lead velocity and maintain collaboration and growth. This process defines distinct stages (often called lifecycle stages) of leads and determines when leads should move from marketing to sales and vice versa.

Clarifying lead definitions and standards for each stage reduces ambiguity and ensures that both sales and marketing teams understand lead management responsibilities. This clarification minimizes friction, streamlines processes, and maintains collaboration between the two departments.

Again, HubSpot is a powerful tool for accomplishing this. Marketing departments can “keep to themselves” leads until they reach the MQL stage. You can then reassign them to a sales team member and let them know it's time to fulfill your SLA portion.

Establishing processes and protocols to manage leads

In order for sales and marketing teams to work seamlessly together, it's important to establish protocols for managing leads and MQL. This includes defining best practices for treating and following up leads, such as when, how often, and how many times to contact leads.

The closed loop reports available in HubSpot play an important role in improving processes and communication. By outlining how leads approved and rejected sales should be reported, you can build a system for feedback and continuous improvement. Not only does this help improve demand generation strategies, but it also helps foster a culture of collaboration between sales and marketing teams.

We track, measure, and evaluate performance metrics.

SLAs shouldn't be established permanently. Instead, you should think of it as “written with a pencil.” Sales and marketing teams can and should double check at least twice a year.

That's why it's important for sales and marketing SLAs to clearly define key performance indicators (KPIs) to be used to evaluate process progress and effectiveness. It's also important to monitor how sales perceive the quality of MQL's streams. If only a few MQLs reach the Sales Qualified Lead (SQL) stage, it may be necessary to raise the threshold or change the criteria to become MQL. On the other hand, if sufficient MQL volume was not found for sales, that threshold can also be lowered.