Sales and marketing are all about the customer. But when they’re not on the same page, it results in problems at every level.

When you start differentiating the marketing and sales teams, there are multiple stumbling blocks which may appear as your company grows. If the arising conflicts between these teams are not clarified, they usually end up blaming each other for missed KPIs and epic fails.

Whichever reasons may cause these “cat & dog relationships”, here is a comprehensive step-by-step guide to help you align the sales and marketing team in order to multiply your outcome.

Learn how the appropriate digital strategy, common goals, Gmail CRM system integration, and proper metrics could increase synergy between sales & marketing teams, and drive better results to your business.

Step 1. Define Clear Company Goals

At least 1 trillion dollars is lost annually because of the poor communication between sales and marketing. Both the sales and marketing departments aim for company growth but using different means. The best way to start is to clarify the strategic and tactical company goals in front of both teams.

Let the marketing team be your long-term business strategy architects who keep in contact with the sales department to integrate the growth plans in reality.

Step 2. Speak the same language

According to Workfront’s Marketing report, miscommunication is considered to be the biggest cause of conflicts among different departments in the workplace. To minimize the risk of future conflicts, invest some time in modeling the integrated revenue cycle — where there is a place not only for quantitative results but also for strategical growth.

Define the unique selling points and core strengths of your product and use them in both your sales and marketing activities. Clear benefits will help marketers address the right audience with the right message, while the sales team could dig further in the details.

To maintain this communication balance both teams need a system to organize all the data about incoming leads and to nurture customer relationships further. Here’s when the customer relationship management (CRM) software integration becomes a necessity.

Step 3. Integrate CRM to sync assets of sales and marketing

It’s nearly impossible to stay on top of the competition without using CRM software to store all contacts and leads in one place, see the history of your communication, and form better customer relationships. 91% of businesses with more than ten employees are using CRM software. If you’re new to CRM, you can start with a CRM solution which works in the form of a Chrome extension and is compatible with your email account (eg. Gmail).



CRM for Gmail is a handy tool which is synchronized with your Gmail account right after downloading the extension. It means that you can manage customer data inside your Gmail account, follow-up on conversations, track your Gmail emails in the CRM and create easy-to-manage pipelines.

Sales teams are always eager to optimize their processes so that more time is spent with customers and less time is spent on collecting information about them. CRM helps to maintain customer win rates since the company is able to withdraw from inefficient deals earlier in the sales process. The information and feedback received from the customers can be used in marketing and further product/service development to sharpen its value.

To marketers, Gmail-integrated CRM is a source of insights into customer behavior. By analyzing the workflow, they can dig deeper and find the downsides of their strategies, discover customer pain points and re-think their strategies before it’s too late.

Don’t integrate the CRM technology in the absence of an accompanying strategy. The CRM system shows how well customer relations are going and directly impact the company’s revenue objectives.

Here’s the list of CRMs which can be used in your Gmail account:

1. NetHunt CRM ( from $0/user, $24/user for professional)

2. Gmelius (from $12/user )

3. Propeller (from $35/user)

4. Zoho (from $18/user)

5. Monday (from $25/user)

Read the reviews on each Gmail CRM carefully: there are plenty of them on G2Crowd, Capterra and more.

“We needed easy solution to use in our sales and marketing departments, so NetHunt Gmail integrated CRM worked best for us. The pricing plan is more than affordable, and the support team is just amazing! They helped us to fully integrate CRM in just 2 Skype sessions.

NetHunt tracks performance keeps all the info about closed deals and revenue. Perfect for us so far”

Nina Bohush, Digital Marketer on G2Crowd

Step 4. Measure Results

Choosing the metrics to track is the first step to measure your CRM return on investment. Start small: define the vital stats in your Gmail CRM to track and add new metrics as your company evolves.

The basic list of features necessary to track includes:

Conversion rate : the number of contacts who converted into customers from multiple channels. Useful both for marketers and salesperson.

: the number of contacts who converted into customers from multiple channels. Useful both for marketers and salesperson. Returning customers : customers who do the second transaction in a certain period of time.

: customers who do the second transaction in a certain period of time. Customer Retention Rate measures clients’ loyalty and helps to maintain great customer relationships. The CRM system shows extensive information on the retained customers, so check up on this metric regularly.

measures clients’ loyalty and helps to maintain great customer relationships. The CRM system shows extensive information on the retained customers, so check up on this metric regularly. Winback Rate measures the percentage of inactive or bounced customers, who have bought your product/service in a certain period of time. Focus on the lapsed customers: if you have a bonus to offer, tailor bulk email campaigns with the Gmail CRM to bring them back.

The team manager can also check out the following metrics in CRM contacts to see the performance of the sales team:

The number of emails sent , including outbound and inbound emails helps you evaluate your overall sales activity. It is usually tracked against the number of sales made per email.

, including outbound and inbound emails helps you evaluate your overall sales activity. It is usually tracked against the number of sales made per email. Email open rate . Sending email campaigns through a Gmail integrated CRM show higher delivery & open rates.

. Sending email campaigns through a Gmail integrated CRM show higher delivery & open rates. The number of new contacts added weekly/monthly . Your company activity should include the growth of your customer base through pitch, networking, etc. The CRM system keeps records of every customer and makes following up with customers easier than ever.

. Your company activity should include the growth of your customer base through pitch, networking, etc. The CRM system keeps records of every customer and makes following up with customers easier than ever. The number of monthly deals closed reflects the number of acquired customers and is usually accompanied by the revenue generated by every customer. As all the data is stored in the CRM, you can calculate the average win rate.

Step 5. Link Your Marketing Strategy, Metrics, and Reports

A recent Capterra study shows that 65% of businesses adopt CRM in the first five years. However, most of them use CRM only for basic company needs.

CRM software is fundamental to marketing automation. It reduces manual work, clearly showing what’s happening inside the processes. Start with the basic and easy CRM Chrome extension and use it in your Gmail account.

For a salesperson, who’s focused on one-to-one interaction, CRM helps to track records of every client with whom they spoke to at least once. Marketing is focused on one-to-many interaction: by seeing all the pipelines, they can tailor their marketing efforts to improve the winback rate or other metrics.

Combining a good strategy with CRM software that meets your company goals will help you minimize the risk of losing track of leads. Company growth does not happen rapidly: it’s heavily affected by your managerial skills and all departments pulling in the same direction. The integration of a Gmail CRM can align sales and marketing teams, driving better results.

Do you have a success/fail story of sales & marketing alignment? Which CRM software are you using? Share your story in comments — the best story will be rewarded with a 20% discount on NetHunt CRM.