LEAD NURTURING AND MARKETING AUTOMATION ARTICLE SUMMATION This article is the first of a series of articles that focuses on the alignment of marketing and sales. There are 15 questions which will be featured individually. The first question to ask the audience is, “How do you achieve alignment between Marketing and Sales?” The article discusses several ways to achieve the alignment between Marketing and Sales, beginning with communicating the problems and how to win by combining forces to include the financial gain that can be rewarded in annual growth. The article continues by laying out the way for the Marketing and Sales teams to achieve the win. The first area covered is “Show them how it works.” This is done by having sales and marketing organizations share knowledge, goals, applications, and processes to keep them aligned. This also provides the incentives that if one team wins, both will win. Second, be able to define terms that both organizations understand so they speak the same language. Third, maintain scheduled meetings together and what has been achieved by documenting the progress together. Fourth, share information and maintain one perspective so that Marketing and Sales see how they are performing against the “metrics that drive company revenue.” Sid Smith writes about the concerns the marketing and sales organizations will have asking. “is there a possible win?” There is if both organizations have a mutual agreement about maintaining their alignment. Both groups have