Marketing leaders at B2B organizations communicate directly with their Sales counterparts to review quantity and quality of inbound leads, to apprise one another of upcoming promotions and sales enablement initiatives and objectives, and to strategically determine the most effective ways for their teams to work together to benefit the organization as a whole.

But, often, these meetings don't include a topic that is possibly the most important of all: existing customers.

Why?

Sales teams are hardwired to focus on getting new leads into the pipeline, and they want marketing to partner with them to make that happen. Marketers want that, too. However, it is important to not lose sight of your current customers. After all, they are the ones who got you this far!

Here are six ways in which aligning sales and marketing goals with your current customers can mean the difference between meeting your quarterly goals and hoping next quarter will be better.

1. Use personas to segment your communication

Marketers invest in marketing automation or email marketing systems so that they can track their emails and ensure that they aren't bombarding their database with too many emails. That's all great, but inevitably Marketing unknowingly blasts an account that Sales has an active opportunity with. And it gets noticed, because it is a communication that's at odds with the customer's relationship with the company. The customer ends up thinking, "Don't they know me by now?"

Marketing and Sales need to divide the customer base into personas and regularly discuss the buying behavior of each persona. From there, a plan to communicate with valued information to each persona can be developed that keeps customer engagement high. In addition, the email communication plan should be transparent to Sales so that it can flag active opportunities—to have them removed from communications during the sales cycle if doing so makes sense.

2. Ensure Sales involvement with referrals

A great sales rep always asks new customers whether they know of anyone else who may be interested in the product. Most reps forget to ask or simply aren't asking at the right time or in the right way. On the flip side, sometimes marketers will start a referral program but forget to engage Sales. Marketing and Sales need to be in tight alignment on this one. If they are, referrals can be the best-producing channel for leads and customer acquisition.

One of the keys here is that the referral software be integrated into the Sales CRM system. Sales needs to know whether the lead came from a referral and who it came from so that Sales can call up that customer, thank the referrer, and get more info on the new lead. The referral software should also have a way for sales to input new advocates and referrals into the system so that it is fully tracked and referrals are rewarded without causing operational burdens for Sales.

3. Be strategic in approaching cross-sell and upsell

Your current customers already know how you have helped them be awesome. Why not suggest—by cross-selling or upselling—ways you can help them be even more awesome and increase their profits?

If you are selling into a large company, crossing over into another department can bring all the revenue of a brand-new customer. Usually that cross-sell is left to Sales, based on the assumption that salespeople will have a relationship good enough for their contact to refer them to another department.

But what if Marketing could help? Back to point No. 2: a referral program can be structured so that customers are offered incentives to refer others in their company and to help influence the buying process.