Is It Time For A Sales and Marketing Alignment?
By Ken Middleton
Business First
December 21, 2007
Does this sound familiar?
Sales says, “Marketing doesn’t deliver the right kind of leads.”
Marketing replies, “Sales doesn’t know how to turn a good lead into a sale.”
If it sounds familiar, you’re probably wondering whether your marketing team is spending your marketing dollars wisely, or whether your sales team is doing its job. Bottom line, you wonder whether sales would increase if you can resolve this conflict.
It’s hard enough to win customers without Sales and Marketing wagging their finger at each other:
Competition for customers is intensifying
Marketing is more difficult because customers are bombarded with so many messages
Sales finds it more difficult to get in front of the right customers with the right message at the right time.
If Sales and Marketing don’t seem to be playing on the same team… or don’t seem to measure success the same way, you may need an “alignment”.
Just to be sure, here are some more symptoms that signal the need to align sales and marketing:
Marketing complains that Sales doesn’t use its marketing materials. Sales complains that they don’t get the right materials and have to create or customize their own.
Marketing believes its job ends when prospective customers contact their company. Sales believes its job starts with the first customer appointment.
Your Sales staff grows impatient with prospective customers stuck in the sales funnel and looks elsewhere. Marketing doesn’t realize it can help move those customers along.
So, what does “alignment” look like?
Both Sales and Marketing agree on your target customer, have a thorough understanding of the needs of your target customers, and agree on how your products or services can help them. So, your marketing materials are tailored to each customer group.
Marketing fully understands what Sales needs based on a thorough understanding of the sales process. So Sales has appropriate and readily accessible marketing support at every stage of the selling process.
Does alignment make a difference?
A 2005 survey showed that businesses reporting the greatest success at alignment:
- Grow 5.4% faster year-to-year than their competition
- Are 38% better at closing proposals than non-aligned businesses
- Lose 36% fewer customers to competitors each year
( “2005 Sales & Marketing Alignment” was a survey of 1400 marketing professionals in 84 countries by MathMarketing and MarketingProfs.com).
How do you achieve alignment? The first step can be as straightforward as getting all the perceptions, concerns, and needs on the table. Facilitate a candid exchange between Sales and Marketing.
- Who does each believe are the customers?
- What are the needs of those customers and how do they know?
- What’s the core ideal sales process for reaching a customer and closing a deal?
- What marketing support does Sales need at every stage?
- How can Marketing stay engaged in the entire selling process?
- How can Sales constantly share its needs, insight, and experience with Marketing?
- What are common metrics for Sales and Marketing?
Aligning Sales and Marketing takes work. The payoff can be huge.
And don’t stop with Sales and Marketing.
Ultimately, the degree of success of a company is determined by how well every employee is aligned with the customers throughout the customer cycle: attracting customers, keeping customers, generating repeat sales from customers, transforming satisfied customers into loyal customers, and transforming loyal customers into champions for your company.
Ken Middleton is Principal of Zing Sales Solutions in Louisville. He can be reached at http://zing-solutions.com