According to the council, this means that they risk falling short of their revenue mandate.

More than 70% of marketers don't feel very confident in their current sales and marketing model to sell effectively in the digitalised customer journey.

The report examines the marketing and sales relationship and how it should evolve.

The report found that the ability to share customers' insights, gathered by data science as well as AI and machine learning, with the sales team to inform the pipeline is one of the defining traits of the new sales-marketing relationship.

Individuals can download the Sales & Marketing: Driving Revenue Through Collaboration report here. 

Key findings include the following:
  • 70% of marketers don't feel very confident in their current sales and marketing model to sell effectively in the digitalised customer journey
  • 60% say marketing and sales don’t co-own customer strategy and data, and
  • 61% of marketers say fragmented technology across marketing, sales and service restrains better sales-marketing alignment.

"Sales and marketing will have to redefine their relationship to enable new customer-centric purchasing paths. This requires an entirely new way to collaborate across customer strategy and data, initiatives, technology, activities and metrics," says Donovan Neale-May, executive director of the CMO Council.

According to the report, CMOs should adopt four sales-marketing alignment initiatives to better support the digitalised customer journey and the self-reliant buyer:
  1. collaborate to achieve business objectives for example revenue, customer acquisition and market share)
  2. collaborate on marketing and sales campaigns that drive lead gen
  3. define shared KPIs for marketing and sales, and
  4. align on customer personas.

"To sell effectively to the new self-reliant digital buyer and enable the purchasing paths customers seek, marketing and sales teams need to have the same goals, speak the same language, and hold each other accountable," adds Jason Galloway, customer advisory lead and marketing consulting practice lead, KPMG LLP.

Galloway says, "The keys to building a strong sales-marketing relationship include co-ownership of customer strategy and data, the agility and ability to hand off real-time data insights and employing the right technologies to share metrics and ensure consistent communication."

Galloway concludes, "The next twelve months are critical for marketing and sales teams to integrate data and optimise touchpoints across the customer journey."

For more information, visit www.cmocouncil.org. You can also follow the CMO Council on Twitter.