Major Takeaways: Challenges of Omnichannel Marketing

Misaligned Teams Kill ROI

• B2B companies lose up to $1 trillion annually from sales and marketing misalignment, making omnichannel cohesion a revenue-critical priority.

Customers Expect Seamless Journeys

• B2B buyers now engage with an average of 10+ channels during the buying cycle; disjointed messaging leads to confusion and drop-offs.

Data Silos Undermine Personalization

• Without integrated tools and shared systems, businesses struggle to personalize outreach—leading to lower engagement and higher churn.

Shared Goals Drive Sales Efficiency

• Companies that align sales and marketing goals see 19% faster growth and 15% higher profitability by unifying KPIs like MQL to SQL conversion.

Orchestrated Campaigns Win More Deals

• Multichannel B2B outreach using email, phone, and LinkedIn increases purchase rates by 287% versus single-channel approaches.

Unified Messaging Increases Trust

• Consistent omnichannel messaging across teams boosts customer confidence and can lift revenue by up to 23%.

Outbound Strategies Must Be Integrated

• Appointment setting, cold email, and LinkedIn outreach are most effective when coordinated with marketing campaigns and buyer signals.

Continuous Feedback Closes Gaps Faster

• Real-time collaboration and closed-loop reporting help refine lead quality and speed up the sales cycle by aligning outreach to buyer behavior.

Introduction

In 2025’s B2B landscape, buyers demand seamless, personalized experiences across numerous channels – a true omnichannel journey. Yet many companies struggle to bridge the divide between sales and marketing, leading to disjointed campaigns, wasted leads, and missed revenue. In this comprehensive guide, we explore why sales and marketing alignment is essential to conquer the challenges of omnichannel marketing, and how B2B leaders can unify their teams for consistent growth. 

We (Martal Group) draw on industry data and our outbound sales expertise to offer actionable strategies – from integrated customer data to coordinated outreach cadences – that drive higher conversion rates, stronger customer loyalty, and a healthier bottom line. 

If you’re a CMO, CRO, VP of Sales/Marketing, or SDR leader facing siloed teams or inconsistent messaging, this post will help you turn omnichannel complexity into competitive advantage.

Why B2B Omnichannel Marketing Is So Challenging (And Why Alignment Matters)

Omnichannel is the new normal for B2B buyers. Today’s business customers use an average of 10 different interaction channels in their buying journey – double the number from just a few years ago (3). They might research a product on your website, see reviews on social media, attend a webinar, engage with sales outreach via email or LinkedIn, and expect the same brand experience throughout. Simply put, there is no single-channel customer anymore (3). This shift creates immense pressure on companies to deliver a consistent, coordinated experience across every touchpoint.

However, delivering a seamless omnichannel experience is easier said than done. Marketing and sales teams often find themselves wrestling with a host of challenges:

• Data Silos and Fragmented Tools: With buyers interacting on so many platforms, companies drown in data that’s scattered across CRM systems, marketing automation, social media, and more. If these systems aren’t integrated, it’s tough to get a single source of truth on the customer (6). Marketing might not see sales interactions and vice versa, leading to incomplete insights.
  
• Personalization at Scale: Customers expect personalized content based on their past interactions, but the more channels involved, the harder this gets (6). A rise in touchpoints can create data silos that hinder tracking engagement. Without unified data, personalization efforts fall flat – e.g. sending irrelevant emails because the system didn’t know a prospect already downloaded that whitepaper.
  
• Campaign Coordination and Attribution: When a buyer’s journey spans LinkedIn ads, website chats, emails, and calls, who gets credit for the sale? Many organizations struggle to track which marketing or sales actions actually drive conversion (6). Traditional “last-touch” models break down in omnichannel. This makes it hard to allocate budget or know which strategies work, often leading to internal tensions (marketing claims credit for leads that sales nurtured, and vice versa).
  
• Inconsistent Messaging: Different teams running different channels can inadvertently create mismatched messaging. Marketing might promote one value proposition on the website while sales reps pitch something else on calls. Inconsistency confuses prospects and weakens your brand. Maintaining a cohesive brand voice and up-to-date information across all media is a major challenge (6).
  
• Technology Complexity and Cost: True omnichannel execution requires connecting numerous lead generation tools – CRM, email sequences, social schedulers, analytics, possibly customer data platforms – not to mention AI and automation to manage the scale (5). This complexity is a primary disadvantage of omnichannel approaches (9). It demands significant investment in tech and training (7), which can strain resources and budgets, especially for midsize firms.
  
• Organizational Silos: Perhaps the biggest barrier isn’t technical at all, but cultural. B2B organizations often have long-established departmental silos – marketing focusing on awareness and MQLs, sales on closing sales deals – with competing priorities and lead generation KPIs. These silos breed miscommunication and finger-pointing (“the leads were bad” vs “sales dropped the ball”), making it impossible to present a unified front to the customer. In fact, the largest obstacle to true omnichannel transformation is misaligned teams and processes, not the tech itself (5).

It’s no wonder that omnichannel marketing, despite its promise, can falter without alignment. When marketing and sales operate in isolation, the customer feels it: interactions become clunky, repetitive, or contradictory. According to Harvard Business Review, companies lose up to $1 trillion annually due to poor sales-marketing coordination (1). That figure underscores a simple truth – bridging the gap between these teams isn’t just about internal harmony, it’s about revenue.

Key Stat: 90% of B2B buyers’ journeys are now completed before ever talking to sales (10). This means marketing is influencing customers long before a sales rep is in the mix. If your marketing and sales efforts aren’t aligned in those early stages, you risk losing the deal before you even know it exists. Conversely, when you do align and provide a seamless journey, you meet buyers where they are – and gain a serious competitive edge.

Why Alignment Matters: Omnichannel success hinges on a simple principle – one team, one message. B2B buyers don’t care which department is responsible for which part of their journey; they only see one company. If your left hand (marketing) doesn’t know what the right hand (sales) is doing, the customer experience breaks. On the other hand, when sales and marketing are tightly aligned, companies reap huge benefits:

• They generate better quality sales leads (marketing targets the right prospects defined with sales input).
  
• They close deals faster (smooth handoffs and consistent follow-up shorten sales cycles).
  
• They earn more revenue – in fact, companies with strongly aligned teams see 19% faster growth and 15% higher profitability on average (2). Another study found such companies are 67% better at closing deals than competitors (2).
  
• They deliver a superior customer experience, with consistent messaging at every stage, which boosts trust and loyalty. Organizations with tight sales-marketing alignment see up to 36% higher customer retention rates (4) – an invaluable metric in B2B where lifetime value is high.

In short, solving omnichannel challenges requires sales-marketing alignment. It’s the foundation that keeps all those moving parts – channels, content, touchpoints – working in unison. Now, let’s dig into how exactly you can build that alignment in a practical, sustainable way.

The High Stakes of Misalignment: What Happens When Sales and Marketing Don’t Sync

Before we explore solutions, it’s worth grasping the cost of doing nothing. Misalignment isn’t just an internal annoyance; it’s a growth killer. Consider these eye-opening facts:

• Wasted Resources: In the U.S., sales and marketing departments together squander approximately $1 trillion each year due to misalignment and duplicate efforts (2). Imagine the wasted campaigns, the leads that go nowhere, the sales calls on unqualified prospects – it all adds up in a big way.
  
• Missed Opportunities: An estimated 79% of marketing leads never convert to sales – often because they are lost or ignored in the handoff to sales (1). This happens when marketing and sales don’t jointly define what a qualified lead looks like or lack a clear process to follow up. (In fact, 62% of organizations report that marketing and sales define “qualified lead” differently (2), leading to confusion and dropped leads.)
  
• Inefficiency and Friction: When teams aren’t aligned, everything slows down. Conversion rates drop, sales cycles stretch longer, and pipeline velocity suffers. One LinkedIn analysis found that 90% of sales and marketing professionals see misalignment in strategy, process or culture at their companies (1). All that friction means prospects don’t get the information they need at the right time, and deals stall. It’s no surprise that companies with poor alignment often see revenue targets slip out of reach.
  
• Inconsistent Customer Experience: Perhaps most damaging, the customer can tell when your teams aren’t on the same page. Prospects might receive inconsistent messaging – for example, marketing promotes a feature or a pricing promo that sales isn’t aware of (or worse, that isn’t actually available). This erodes trust. According to industry surveys, 87% of buyers expect sales and marketing to be aligned on their messaging and information; when they detect a disconnect, it undermines confidence in your solution. Businesses with strong alignment, on the other hand, achieve 36% higher customer retention on average by delivering a cohesive experience (4).
  
• Employee Morale & Accountability: Internally, misalignment breeds a blame culture. Marketing might feel sales isn’t working leads hard enough; sales complains the leads are low quality. This adversarial dynamic not only hurts morale, it prevents constructive feedback loops. In aligned organizations, wins are shared – marketing celebrates when sales closes deals, and sales acknowledges marketing’s contribution. Without that, you get siloed victories at best, and open animosity at worst. (It’s telling that only 2% of sales/marketing teams rate their collaboration as excellent, per some reports (11).) Clearly, no one wins in the blame game scenario.

The bottom line: Misalignment is too costly to ignore. As a modern B2B leader, you can’t afford to have your two revenue-generating engines working against each other or even just independently. The companies that will dominate the omnichannel era are those that connect their sales and marketing efforts so tightly that to the customer, it feels like one continuous conversation. In the next sections, we’ll turn to exactly how to create that connection.

(Feeling the pressure? Don’t worry – next, we’ll outline concrete strategies to align your teams and overcome these challenges.)

7 Key Strategies to Bridge the Sales-Marketing Divide in an Omnichannel World

Effective alignment doesn’t happen by accident. It requires deliberate strategy, process changes, and often a cultural shift. Based on our experience at Martal (and lessons learned from helping dozens of B2B companies), we’ve identified several proven strategies to get sales and marketing truly working as one. Here are seven action steps to consider:

1. Establish Shared Goals, Definitions, and KPIs from the Start

Alignment begins with speaking the same language and pursuing the same outcomes. Too often, marketing is rewarded purely on lead volume or MQLs, while sales cares only about deals closed. This sets up conflict by design. Instead, bring leadership from both teams together to define:

• Common goals: For example, a revenue target or pipeline target that both departments share. If marketing and sales are both accountable for, say, $10M in new pipeline per quarter, they’re incentivized to collaborate on every stage of the funnel.
  
• Unified definitions: Agree on what constitutes a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) and a Sales Qualified Lead (SQL), or whatever stages you use. Document the criteria. It sounds basic, but 62% of teams admit they have different definitions of a qualified lead (2) – a recipe for misalignment. End that ambiguity by creating a clear ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) and qualification checklist together.
  
• Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that overlap: Instead of siloed metrics (marketing = website traffic, sales = closed deals), identify a few metrics that reflect joint success. Examples: conversion rate from MQL to SQL, opportunities created, overall customer acquisition cost (CAC), average deal cycle time. Track these jointly and review them in interdepartmental meetings. When both teams win or lose together on the same KPIs, unity follows. (Notably, 96% of marketers and salespeople say they’re not using the same metrics to measure success (2) – changing this is low-hanging fruit for alignment.)

Set up a service level agreement (SLA) if needed – e.g., marketing will deliver X number of qualified business leads per month, and sales will follow up with every MQL within Y days with a defined touch pattern. This formalizes accountability on both sides. The act of negotiating an SLA also surfaces each team’s needs and capacity, fostering mutual understanding.

2. Foster Continuous Communication and Collaboration

It might sound obvious, but regular, structured communication between sales and marketing is often missing. No more silos on opposite ends of the building (or Zoom calls). Implement mechanisms for constant collaboration:

• Joint weekly or biweekly meetings: Use these to discuss pipeline status, campaign results, and upcoming activities. For instance, marketing can brief sales on an upcoming content campaign or webinar, so reps know what prospects might be seeing. Sales can share feedback on lead quality or common objections they’re hearing, informing marketing’s messaging. Keep these meetings focused and actionable (e.g., “Top 5 deals to work this month and how marketing can help accelerate them”). Over time, this creates a culture of “we’re in this together.”
  
• Integrated campaign planning: When launching any omnichannel campaign, involve sales early. Say marketing is rolling out a new whitepaper or a targeted ABM (Account-Based Marketing) initiative – coordinate with the sales team on target accounts and follow-up strategy. Perhaps marketing’s LinkedIn ads will warm up an account, and BDRs will follow with personalized outreach. Co-planning ensures seamless execution: the prospect who clicks an ad might get a call the next week where the sales rep continues the story, rather than an awkward disconnect. In fact, companies that engage multiple stakeholders across an account with unified strategies outperform others by 50% in revenue growth (2).
  
• Collocated or cross-functional teams: Some organizations take it a step further and create “pods” or “squads” consisting of a couple of sales reps, a marketer, perhaps a sales engineer – all tasked with a common set of accounts or a region. This can dramatically increase daily collaboration. Even if you don’t restructure formally, encouraging marketers to sit in on sales calls or having sales folks review content can break down barriers. Marketers gain empathy for the salesperson’s world (and the customer’s direct voice), while sales gains appreciation for the work that goes into generating leads.

Remember, alignment is a relationship, not a one-time project. It’s like any team effort – built through trust and frequent communication. When marketing and sales start celebrating wins together (e.g. marketing applauds when a sales rep closes a lead they nurtured), you know you’re on the right track. As one study showed, 85% of sales and marketing leaders believe alignment presents the greatest opportunity for improving business performance (2). Open communication is what turns that belief into reality.

3. Implement a Unified Tech Stack and Single Customer View

Technology can be an incredible enabler of alignment – or a source of division if not handled right. To execute omnichannel, outbound campaigns that feel unified, your systems need to be unified. Key steps:

• Adopt an integrated CRM as your “single source of truth”: Ideally, marketing and sales should work from one core platform (e.g. a CRM like Salesforce, HubSpot, etc.) that tracks all interactions with each account or contact. This means all emails, calls, meeting notes, website visits, content downloads – everything – flows into one contact timeline accessible to both teams. When a sales rep can see the marketing touchpoints that happened before their outreach, they’re far better equipped to have a relevant conversation (“I saw you attended our webinar on supply chain trends – thanks for joining!”). Conversely, if marketing sees that a prospect just had a product demo with sales, they can adjust nurture emails accordingly. A central customer data platform (CDP) can also help by aggregating data from many sources for a 360° view (6). The goal is to eliminate blind spots.
  
• Connect online and offline channels: In B2B, some channels are owned by marketing (website, webinars, social), others by sales (calls, in-person meetings, LinkedIn direct outreach). Use technology to bridge these. For example, tracking pixels and campaign attribution tools can tie a specific lead to the webinar they attended or the ad they clicked, all the way through to the deal closing. Multi-touch attribution models (with the help of analytics or BI tools) should be implemented to credit all the channels involved in a sale, not just the last touch (6). This way, marketing efforts that assist sales deeper in the funnel don’t get undervalued. Modern revenue analytics can show that, say, an eBook download influenced pipeline even if the deal closed via a direct sales interaction. Those insights encourage teams to support each other’s channels.
  
• Use collaborative tools: Besides CRM, think about tools that help marketing and sales create together. Shared project management boards (to coordinate campaigns), collaborative content platforms (so sales can suggest content topics or quickly customize marketing assets), and communication apps (like Slack channels dedicated to Sales-Marketing collaboration) can all streamline teamwork. Many companies set up an internal “Win Wire” newsletter or Slack channel where sales shares big wins and credits the marketing touchpoints that helped – spreading success stories and best practices.
  
• Ensure data quality and access: Nothing frustrates a sales rep more than not having the info they need in their system, or conversely, marketers not seeing the latest status of a lead. Dedicate effort to keeping data clean and updated. Define data governance rules – e.g., sales must update lead status within X days of contact, marketing must input campaign responses immediately. Investing in data integration (through APIs or an integration platform) pays off. Leading B2B firms are pulling together data from CRM, marketing automation, third-party intent data, and even trade show scans into unified dashboards (5). When everyone works off the same reality, alignment becomes much more natural.

Real-World Example: One of our clients, a B2B manufacturing firm, struggled with disjointed data – e-commerce transactions sat in one database, sales rep interactions in another. We helped implement Dynamics 365 CRM with all channels feeding in. Almost immediately, sales started receiving alerts when key accounts engaged with marketing content (e.g. a whitepaper download), allowing reps to follow up within hours with a helpful call. Marketing also began seeing which content pieces were used by sales in late-stage deals. This closed-loop insight led to tweaks in content strategy (more case studies, fewer generic brochures) that directly improved win rates. The technology unified the teams around the customer’s journey rather than their departmental activities.

4. Align on Messaging and Content Strategy (Build One Unified Narrative)

An omnichannel approach falters if the messaging isn’t consistent. A core part of alignment is ensuring that marketing and sales tell the same story about the product and value proposition, each reinforcing the other. How to achieve this:

• Create shared messaging guides: Collaboratively develop your key buyer personas, their pain points, and the messaging for each stage of their journey. Document this in a playbook that both teams use. For example, if you identify that CIOs care about security and ROI, while end-users care about ease-of-use, make sure marketing’s campaign materials and sales pitch decks both address those points in complementary ways. Regularly update these guides as you learn more. When 95% of prospects cite getting inconsistent or misleading information as a top frustration, delivering a uniform message becomes a competitive edge.
  
• Involve sales in content creation (and vice versa): Salespeople are on the front lines – they hear objections and questions daily. Involve them when brainstorming new marketing content. They’ll tell you if a proposed ebook topic is something prospects actually ask about, or suggest creating a comparison sheet that they know would help during competitive deals. Some companies even have sales reps occasionally write blog posts or appear in marketing videos, which is great for authenticity (with marketing polishing the content). Conversely, have marketers shadow a few sales calls or demos. It’s one of the fastest ways for them to internalize the customer’s language and needs, which will reflect in sharper content.
  
• Maintain brand and voice consistency: Work together to define the tone and style of communications. B2B buyers expect a coherent experience – it’s jarring if the marketing emails are playful and educational, but a sales call is aggressively pushy, or if the website touts one benefit and the proposal highlights another. Train both teams on the brand’s voice. Simple tactic: share snippets of effective emails and talk tracks from top performers with marketing, and share high-performing ad copy or nurture emails with sales – cross-pollinate the best messaging. Some firms set up a joint repository of approved messaging: sales enablement content, value prop statements, email templates, etc., that everyone can draw from to stay on-message.
  
• Consistency across channels: Ensure things like pricing, product details, and offers are aligned. It’s frustrating if a prospect sees a different price online than what the sales rep quotes, or gets an email promoting a feature that the BDR on the phone call doesn’t even mention. Omnichannel means every channel sings from the same song sheet. This may require an internal process like a single owner (or committee) for approving messaging changes and disseminating updates to all teams. As TechTarget points out, maintaining brand consistency is a known challenge – different platforms have different limitations (6), but the core message should remain intact. When in doubt, simplicity and clarity win: one campaign theme that is tweaked for each channel, not a new campaign per channel.

By aligning on messaging, you essentially amplify your impact. Marketing “warms up” the audience with the right story, and sales drives it home in conversations. Prospects hear a cohesive narrative repeated and reinforced – which is key to building trust. According to research, consistency can increase sales by 23% because each interaction builds on the last, rather than confusing the customer. It’s truly a case of 1+1=3 when marketing and sales speak as one.

5. Coordinate Multichannel Outreach and Omnichannel Campaigns

To tackle omnichannel effectively, marketing and sales must coordinate their outreach efforts across channels. This is where alignment gets very tactical – but also highly rewarding when done right. A few best practices:

• Design orchestrated “plays”: Rather than marketing and sales doing separate outreach, create joint sequences. For example, an omnichannel prospecting play might look like: Day 1 marketing runs a targeted LinkedIn ad to a decision-maker; Day 3 an SDR sends a personalized email referencing that ad or content (“I hope you caught our infographic on X – I’d love to discuss how it impacts your strategy”); Day 5 the SDR calls or leaves a voicemail; Day 7 marketing sends a case study email; Day 10 the SDR connects on LinkedIn with a value-add message, etc. By staggering and coordinating touches, you increase the chance of engagement without overwhelming the prospect. Research shows campaigns using 3 or more channels see 287% higher purchase rates than single-channel efforts (8) – essentially, multi-channel touches reinforce each other and multiply impact.
  
• Use each channel for its strength: Perhaps marketing’s webinar generates interest and a list of questions asked by attendees – pass that intel to sales for highly tailored follow-up calls. Or if sales has trouble reaching a prospect via phone, maybe marketing can retarget that contact with an email nurturing workflow. The idea is to not let any prospect fall through the cracks of a single-channel attempt. We’ve seen that companies using multi-channel outreach in sales see significantly better response rates and pipeline growth, simply because you meet the prospect on their preferred channel. (One prospect might ignore emails but respond on LinkedIn; another might prefer a phone call – you won’t know unless you try a mix.)
  
• Leverage technology for timing and personalization: Tools like sales engagement platforms can automate parts of these sequences (ensuring, for instance, that once marketing emails a whitepaper, a day later a task is created for sales to call that lead). Meanwhile, marketing automation can score leads based on engagement and trigger alerts to sales at the optimal time (e.g., “Lead X just visited the pricing page twice in 48 hours”). We at Martal use AI-driven sales engagement software to synchronize emails, calls, and social touches, so no lead goes untouched for too long. Personalization tokens allow us to reference a lead’s industry or recent activity, making each interaction more relevant. The result is an omnichannel cadence that feels personal, not robotic. Remember, 90% of consumers (including B2B buyers) expect seamless interactions across channels, yet only 29% of businesses can deliver that (8) – being among those 29% is a massive competitive differentiator.
  
• Don’t forget offline and human channels: Omnichannel doesn’t mean “all digital.” Especially in high-value B2B deals, human interactions (calls, meetings, conferences) are still critical – they just need to be integrated. If a lead meets you at a trade show booth (an offline touch), that info should go into the CRM and initiate an email follow-up sequence (online touch) plus a rep’s call. Post-event follow-ups are a classic place where sales-marketing coordination either shines or fails. Plan them together: marketing can provide event highlights or a thank-you email, and sales follows up personally with those who showed interest. The customer should feel like the hand-off from event to follow-up is smooth and expected.

Multi-channel orchestration in action: One B2B software client of ours saw spectacular results by aligning outreach. We set up a coordinated plan where marketing ran an email campaign offering a compelling industry report download, and simultaneously our SDRs prepared lead lists to reach out to those who clicked. When prospects answered the phone, they often said, “Oh yeah, I just saw your report in my inbox,” which opened the door for conversation. That familiarity (from the marketing touch) warmed the call, converting what would have been a cold call into a lukewarm one. The outcome: a 30% increase in response rates to our calls and emails versus when each team worked independently. In essence, the whole became greater than the sum of parts.

Finally, it’s worth noting that true omnichannel execution means pivoting based on buyer behavior. If a prospect isn’t responding on one channel, try another. Marketing and sales should jointly monitor engagement: if an account is unresponsive to digital ads and emails, maybe it’s time for sales to try a direct mail package or an invitation to a small roundtable event. Be creative and persistent – aligned teams can cover more ground and adapt strategy on the fly, whereas alone, each might give up too soon. (Did you know it takes an average of 8 touches to get an initial meeting in B2B? Many reps stop after 2-3 tries. A coordinated omnichannel approach ensures those 8+ touches happen across various media, greatly increasing your odds.)

6. Use Data and Feedback for Continuous Improvement (Closed-Loop Reporting)

Alignment is not a “set and forget” achievement – it’s an ongoing process of learning and adjusting as a team. The best-aligned organizations set up closed-loop feedback systems, where data flows in both directions and directly informs strategy. Here’s how you can do the same:

• Closed-loop reporting: Ensure that when a lead converts to a deal, the feedback is sent to marketing about which campaign or content influenced it. Likewise, have sales provide qualitative feedback on lead sources. For example, set up a quick survey or required field in the CRM for sales reps to indicate lead quality or fit after their first call. If marketing sees that leads from Source A consistently get high scores and fast closes, whereas Source B leads languish, they can adjust spend accordingly. Many companies have dramatically improved ROI by cutting programs that look good in marketing metrics but don’t actually translate to revenue, as identified by sales feedback. In fact, 67% of B2B organizations outperform their peers in revenue growth by unifying their commercial strategies and engaging multiple stakeholders with insight from shared data (2).
  
• Regular post-mortems and win-loss analysis: When you win a big deal, get the marketing and sales folks involved together to analyze why. Did the prospect mention that a particular whitepaper or case study was really helpful? Did they get all the info they needed along the way? Conversely, when you lose a deal or a marketing campaign flops, analyze it jointly. Perhaps sales noticed all the lost deals had a common objection that marketing wasn’t addressing. Or marketing might observe that certain leads consistently die in a specific stage of the B2B sales funnel, indicating a need for a new sales tool or better qualification. By dissecting outcomes together, you both learn and avoid repeating mistakes.
  
• Metrics that matter (to customers): Traditional funnel metrics are fine, but also consider customer-centric metrics as a team. For instance, track customer engagement score across marketing and sales touches (how active and responsive are they?), or time to first value (how quickly after initial contact do they see value, which could correlate with how well sales set expectations vs. marketing promise). Also measure customer satisfaction or NPS post-sale and trace it back to pre-sale interactions – are deals where marketing and sales were aligned yielding happier customers? These kinds of insights reinforce why alignment isn’t just feel-good, it drives long-term retention and referrals.
  
• Iterate and optimize: Use A/B testing not just in marketing emails, but even in sales approaches. For example, test two different email cadences jointly designed by marketing and sales, or two value prop angles in outbound calls, and share results. Maybe marketing finds that Subject Line X gets more opens, and sales finds that Pitch Y on calls gets better engagement – combine those learnings to refine the outreach sequence for everyone. Treat alignment like a continuous improvement project, with both teams as equal partners in experimentation.

By closing the loop, you create a virtuous cycle: marketing knows what happens to their leads and can improve targeting; sales knows which campaigns are coming and what context leads have, so they improve conversion. Over time, this data-driven alignment can dramatically lower your customer acquisition cost. One study found that when teams are aligned and constantly optimizing, companies see 208% more value from marketing efforts with 108% less friction internally (2). That’s the power of two engines running in sync – you get more output with less wasted energy.

7. Cultivate a Culture of Alignment from the Top Down

The final (and arguably most important) strategy is cultural. Tools and processes can enable alignment, but true alignment is a mindset embraced by your people. Leaders need to champion the mantra that “we win together.” Some tips:

• Leadership alignment: It starts at the top. Ensure your VP of Sales and VP of Marketing (or equivalents) meet regularly and present a united front. If these leaders have a strong, trust-based relationship, their teams will follow suit. We recommend joint leadership updates to the CEO or board on revenue progress – not separate sales vs marketing presentations. When the C-suite sees the heads of Sales and Marketing sitting side by side, co-owning results, it reinforces that unity to the whole company.
  
• Unified incentives: Consider how the compensation plans and incentives can support alignment. For instance, include a component in marketing’s bonus for sales pipeline generated (not just raw lead numbers), and a component in sales’ bonus for following up marketing leads in a timely manner or contributing to content. Some companies even create revenue teams with shared bonus pools. While you must maintain clear individual accountability, a small tweak in incentives can go a long way in getting someone to pick up the phone and call that MQL or to spend an extra hour helping with a webinar.
  
• Cross-training and empathy: Encourage team members to walk in each other’s shoes. Maybe have new sales hires spend a day with the marketing team learning about campaigns, and new marketing hires shadow sales calls. This breaks down “us vs them” mentalities. When a marketer personally knows the sales reps and sees their challenges (and vice versa), a foundation of empathy is built. They’re more likely to jump in to help each other and less likely to make negative assumptions.
  
• Celebrate aligned wins: Make a big deal of successes that came from teamwork. For example, if a particular account was landed through great marketing air cover and skillful sales closing, highlight that story in company meetings or internal newsletters. Give shout-outs to both the marketer who ran the campaign and the sales executive who closed – and emphasize how together they earned that new customer. Storytelling is powerful; these narratives will stick and encourage others to replicate the collaboration.
  
• Address conflicts openly: Even in aligned cultures, disagreements happen (e.g., sales thinks a campaign’s messaging is off, or marketing is frustrated with low follow-up rates). The key is to address these quickly as shared problems rather than finger-pointing. Facilitate open forums or retrospectives where grievances can be aired constructively. When people see that issues lead to joint problem-solving rather than blaming, they’ll be more forthcoming with feedback – which only makes your strategy stronger.

Creating a pro-alignment culture may involve breaking some old habits. If historically the teams had a rivalry, it takes time to build trust. But persistence pays. One client of ours had marketing and sales literally sitting on different floors and rarely interacting aside from lead handoffs. We helped institute cross-team workshops and even mixed seating for a period. The early days were awkward, but within a quarter we saw a shift: jokes exchanged between teams, faster feedback on campaigns, and a drastic reduction in duplicate efforts. By year’s end, that company saw a 15% increase in revenue and attributed it in part to better alignment (sales cycles were shorter and win rates improved). The CRO said, “It feels like we finally removed the invisible wall inside our company – and wow, what a difference it makes.”

In summary, achieving sales-marketing alignment in an omnichannel world involves a combination of clear agreements, continuous teamwork, integrated tools, data-driven tweaks, and cultural commitment. It might be work, but it’s work that yields a direct payoff in growth, efficiency, and customer satisfaction.

Next, let’s talk about a specialized aspect of omnichannel alignment – leveraging outbound lead generation and appointment setting as part of your strategy (something we know a bit about at Martal!).

Leveraging Outbound Lead Generation for Omnichannel Success (Martal’s Approach)

While inbound marketing often grabs the spotlight in omnichannel discussions, outbound lead generation remains a critical pillar of a B2B omnichannel strategy – especially when tightly aligned with marketing. Martal’s expertise lies heavily in this realm: outbound prospecting, multi-channel outreach, and appointment setting that fill your sales pipeline with qualified opportunities. Here’s how outbound fits into the omnichannel alignment puzzle, and how we make it work:

Outbound as an Omnichannel Engine: Modern outbound sales is itself omnichannel. Gone are the days of just cold-calling from a phone book. Today, effective outbound reps use a blend of channels – B2B cold email, LinkedIn messages, phone calls, voice mails, even SMS or direct mail in some cases – to reach prospects. Our team, for example, might start by engaging a target on LinkedIn (viewing their profile, liking a post), then send a personalized email referencing a pain point, follow up with a call, and later invite them to a webinar hosted by our marketing team. This coordinated approach ensures a prospect sees your solution wherever they turn. It’s outbound, but it doesn’t operate in a silo – it amplifies and is amplified by marketing touches.

Consistency with Marketing Messaging: A crucial success factor is that our outbound outreach mirrors the narratives marketing is pushing. If your marketing team is promoting a new e-book “Top 2025 Trends in Supply Chain,” you can bet our SDRs will reference those trends in their talk track and encourage prospects to download the e-book (if they haven’t already). Similarly, when marketing runs an email campaign on a value prop, we ensure our cold call scripts and LinkedIn messages hit the same value prop. Prospects often comment, “Yeah, I’ve been seeing your company everywhere lately,” which is exactly the omnichannel effect we want – it builds credibility through repetition. And because sales and marketing are aligned, that repetition is reinforcing the same core message rather than a disjointed one.

Quality Over Quantity – Targeted Outreach: In an omnichannel world, blasting thousands of cold calls or generic emails isn’t effective (and can even harm your brand). Instead, outbound should be targeted and insight-driven. We work closely with clients to define ideal customer profiles and use marketing insights (like intent data or engagement scores) to prioritize who we contact. For example, if marketing identifies 50 accounts showing surging interest (visiting the website frequently, engaging with content), our outbound team will double down on those – perhaps offering a tailored free consultation or demo. This synergy means hot leads get human engagement at the right moment, and cold leads continue to be nurtured by marketing until they’re warmer. It’s a one-two punch: marketing softens the beachhead, outbound comes in to initiate a direct conversation. The result? Much higher conversion rates from lead to appointment. In fact, companies that excel at this kind of sales-marketing coordination achieve higher opportunity conversion – up to 65% increase in turning target accounts into pipeline (2).

Expert Appointment Setting: One tangible output of great alignment is a strong B2B appointment setting service. At Martal, setting qualified sales meetings for our clients is a core deliverable. But to do that, we ensure a few things:

• The prospect has been educated by the time they agree to a meeting (thanks to both marketing content and our SDR’s consultative approach), so they’re more likely to show up and be interested.
  
• The meeting is with the right person, at the right company, matching the criteria the sales team needs (authority, budget, need, etc.). We don’t just book meetings for the sake of numbers; we aim for high-quality appointments that advance the sale. This is achieved by close alignment on lead qualification criteria (remember those shared definitions!). When we started working with one tech client, there was initially a mismatch – our team was booking a lot of demos that the sales reps later found lacked key decision-makers. We huddled with the client’s marketing and sales leaders, refined the ICP and qualifying questions, and adjusted our targeting. The result: fewer total meetings, but every meeting was with a manager or director level and above, and the pipeline contribution skyrocketed. Marketing appreciated that we weren’t flooding sales with unvetted leads; sales appreciated that marketing was helping educate the market to create demand. That’s alignment in action, producing efficient growth.
  
• Persistence and timing are key. Our outbound reps know that it can take numerous attempts to reach busy executives. They also know when to pull in marketing. For instance, if an SDR has tried calling a prospect 6 times with no luck, we might have marketing send a “break-up email” or a last-chance offer, or conversely, put that prospect on a nurture track and revisit them in a quarter. This coordination ensures that no prospect is ever truly abandoned or over-prospected – we strike the balance. Statistic: Did you know it takes 18 or more calls on average to connect with a B2B buyer by phone in recent yearstendril.us? Many sales teams simply don’t have the bandwidth for that level of persistence across channels. That’s where an outbound team like ours, laser-focused on multi-touch cadences, shines. We ensure those multiple touches happen, so your in-house sales team can focus on the later stages of the deal.

Case in point: A VP of Sales at a SaaS firm (one of our clients) remarked that before working with us, their sales team only followed up twice on most leads due to time constraints. As a result, 80% of marketing leads were never truly worked. After engaging Martal’s outbound service, every lead got a thorough, professional multi-channel follow-up. Their meeting rate doubled and pipeline value grew by 150% in six months – all without increasing their internal headcount. Marketing was thrilled because their hard-won leads were finally getting the attention they deserved, and sales was thrilled because their calendars were full of meetings with interested prospects. Essentially, we acted as the glue between marketing’s lead generation and sales’ closing, executing that middle part of the funnel with an omnichannel outbound approach.

In an aligned omnichannel strategy, outbound plays a vital supporting role to inbound, and vice versa. It’s not either/or; you need both “push” and “pull” tactics working in harmony. Outbound can proactively reach high-value targets that inbound might miss, and it can accelerate deals that inbound nurtured slowly. The key is coordination, shared messaging, and mutual visibility – all hallmarks of alignment. Our philosophy is that every appointment set is not just a sales touch, but the continuation of a marketing narrative. That mindset ensures prospects experience one continuous journey.

Martal’s Tiered Outbound Solutions: Because B2B needs differ, we offer tiered engagement models – from pure appointment setting for companies that just need that top-of-funnel boost, up to fully managed sales development where we handle prospect research, multichannel outreach, lead nurturing, and handoff to your closers. In all cases, we integrate with your team and tools (using your email domains, CRM, etc.) so that from the prospect’s perspective, we are part of your company. This is crucial for omnichannel consistency – the prospect never feels like they’re talking to an external agency disconnected from your brand. We operate as an extension of your team, aligning with your marketing calendar and sales priorities weekly. It’s a collaborative partnership. For instance, if your marketing plans a big product announcement next month, we’ll tailor our outreach strategies to build anticipation for it and then follow up after it with those who clicked the announcement. If sales tells us Q4 is focused on healthcare industry deals, we’ll pivot our targeting and messaging to healthcare themes, aligning with any industry events or content marketing in that vertical.

In short, Martal’s outbound services are designed not as a siloed telemarketing effort, but as a strategic omnichannel program that bridges the gap between marketing leads and sales closes. Our contribution is measured not just in number of meetings, but in pipeline created and eventually deals won – the metrics that matter. By outsourcing inside sales or partnering on the outbound piece, many companies find they can scale faster without losing alignment; we bring the expertise to execute quickly and the perspective of having done this across industries, which we openly share with our clients (often we end up advising on marketing tweaks or B2B sales process improvements as we see what works).

For B2B organizations aiming to truly overcome omnichannel challenges, a resource like Martal can be the catalyst that binds your revenue teams together. We bring in the leads and nurture them, you close them – but throughout, “we” (as one team) guide the buyer from curiosity to signing contracts. That’s the power of an aligned approach.

Conclusion: Uniting for Omnichannel Success in 2025 and Beyond

Omnichannel excellence is quickly becoming the price of admission in B2B markets – buyers expect a coherent, personalized journey no matter how or where they engage with your company. As we’ve explored, the challenges of omnichannel marketing are real: data fragmentation, coordination headaches, content consistency, and especially the perennial divide between sales and marketing. But as we’ve also seen, these challenges can be overcome – and the rewards for doing so are tremendous. Higher growth, happier customers, smoother internal operations, and a leg up on less-coordinated competitors.

The common thread through all of this is alignment. Bridging the sales and marketing gap is the linchpin of omnichannel marketing success. When we align our teams, our goals, our tools, and our messaging, we effectively build a bridge for the customer – guiding them seamlessly from first inquiry to closed deal and beyond. In 2025’s complex B2B landscape, that bridge is what turns complexity into conversion.

At Martal, we truly believe in the power of this alignment. We’ve witnessed first-hand how a tiered, integrated approach to outbound lead generation can spark pipeline growth and bolster marketing efforts simultaneously. Our outbound specialists, acting as an extension of your team, bring in qualified, sales ready leads through coordinated omnichannel outreach, set up high-value appointments, and ensure no prospect slips through the cracks. All the while, we make sure the tone and timing complement your marketing strategy, not conflict with it. The result is a unified front that resonates with buyers.

Ready to overcome your B2B omnichannel alignment challenges? We’re here to help. Martal offers tiered outbound solutions tailored to your needs – whether you require a targeted appointment-setting boost or a fully managed sales development program. Our approach is consultative and data-driven, designed to mesh with your existing efforts and elevate them. If you’re looking to accelerate growth with an aligned sales-marketing engine, let’s talk. Book a free consultation with our team to assess your current strategy and explore how we can help bridge any gaps. Together, we’ll build a cohesive omnichannel game plan that fills your pipeline with quality opportunities and drives consistent revenue gains.

Don’t let omnichannel complexity hold your organization back. With the right alignment and expert partners in your corner, you can turn every channel into a revenue channel. Let’s bridge that gap – and lead your sales and marketing teams to win as one.

References

1. LinkedIn (Tendril)
2. Sales Genie
3. McKinsey & Co.
4. Demandbase
5. Digital Commerce 360
6. TechTarget
7. NetSuite
8. Firework
9. Brainly
10. Madison Logic
11. Kaon Interactive