The marketing, sales, and support stakeholders in a successful team trifecta have to work from a single shared view of a customer’s history with the company. This is no easy feat because all three tend to use very different systems and tools.

Within the team trifecta, marketing is the natural candidate for taking a leadership position in achieving alignment. Why marketers? Well, they are the only team that invests in every stage of the customer lifecycle. This is a practical perspective that can also inform and empower their sales and customer success colleagues. And they have the infrastructure, usually the marketing technology, paired with the CRM and other types of tools, that can really be the backbone of this alignment.

For example, here at Act-On, we use our marketing automation platform to welcome new customers. We also use our technology to identify customers who haven’t adopted certain pieces of our product, and then direct marketing campaigns to them to see if we can get them educated and better engaged with the product. We do this because we know the more engaged they are with Act-On, the more successful they will be.

How do you whether you are aligned? It will mean that marketing, sales and support stakeholders are working together from a single shared view of a customer’s history with the company. What this means is you can start to build a single mutually acceptable set of goals, and really define who you’re targeting. And this benefits all three groups. If marketing has more intelligence about who makes a good customer, and who stays on board, and who’s ultimately going to be successful with the product, they can adjust their marketing programs accordingly. The sales team has an easier time selling, and the customer success team has an easier time keeping and expanding those relationships.

The team trifecta is the idea marketing can really lead the charge in creating an alliance between marketing, sales and customer success and be able to identify and take advantage of untapped opportunities for a winning trifecta.