Sales and Marketing 2.0: Does sales care about sales-marketing alignment?

Why isn't sales talking about "marketing alignment"? It's simple. They have a quota to hit. Regardless of the quality or quantity of leads that are generated, brand identity, or overall market perception (all of which impact their ability to perform), they have no choice but to perform.

Put the marketing team on a "sales dependent" commission plan, you'll have instant "alignment"...

Dan

If marketing is the only one "talking" about alignment, then they are not doing enough to make it happen. And that means making sure that they have programs in place that deliver qualified leads that convert into deals that sales recognizes came from marketing. That's at the marketing team/sales rep level. But to quote Dave Stein from a blog post he made last month. "... alignment begins not with strategies, tasks and activities, but rather with the philosophies and values of the sales and marketing leaders and the person who is in the position to hire both."

If the leaders are not aligned and clear on what makes the two teams work well, then no amount of talking will fix it. Believe me, for industry leading companies, the head of Sales knows and appreciates the value of Marketing. It is up to the Marketing Leader to make sure that his team understands that marketing is there to serve sales and do what it take s to make sales successful.

Coming from Sales before I moved over to the marketing side, I already thought and acted like a sales rep. It is one of the hardest things to teach members of the marketing team, unless they sold before. But as Michael Fox said above, marketing can learn a lot through facilitation and spending time with key sales team members to know what needs to be developed and delivered to make a difference.

Henry Bruce
@hebruce

Great question!

I find that every client we work with has difficulty with this issue. Here's an example from a current client: Marketing is preparing a product launch for a new product with a million dollar price point. They're doing a lot of work to create buzz and engaged PropelGrowth to create content for the launch. Of course, after learning more about the product and their needs, the first questions we asked were "Who is the audience? Who is in the buying committee? What are the key drivers for a buying decision?" We asked these questions to the heads of marketing, product marketing, and product management. Not one of these people could answer the question. This is a well-established global player in the capital markets.

Of course, our approach is to then go immediately to sales, dig in and figure out what the customers need and how they buy. But the problem is clear.

Marketing is creating all kinds of content and running programs to create awareness about a product without understanding the buyer or the buyer's needs. They're supporting a long and complex buying process, but they have not defined their target audience. They survey and interview customers to develop the vision for products. But still, they don't understand their buyers or how users use their products.

In my opinion, Marketing needs to stop talking about "alignment" and get out of their ivory towers into the thick of things and find out what Sales is up against. Then they'll be able to go to work and create the kind of content and campaigns that will really make a difference.

Of course, on the other side of that coin, Sales needs to give marketing access. Take them on sales calls, let them in on the discussions and talk to them about the pushback coming from prospects. The more closely marketing and sales work together to achieve a common goal, the more aligned they'll be.

Candyce Edelen
PropelGrowth
www.propelgrowth.com

Smart marketers are realizing that their roles are increasingly being evaluated based on quantifiable impact on sales & revenue. Given that, it makes sense that they're forcing the conversation so that they're moving their perceived role from cost center to a critical part of the revenue-generation machine.

I often hear the push for alignment less from sales & marketing, and more from the C-suite. The CEO and CFO are increasingly forcing their organizations to ignore traditional org structure and work together against a common goal.

I was a little surprised to read the comment above, about "CEO's and CFO's increasingly forcing their organizations to ignore traditional org structure[s] and work together against a common goal." Surely the "common" goal is always going to be to generate more revenue and create a healthy profit to drive business growth. The departmental goals will be specific to each business unit but all those individual goals are designed to achieve the common goal (in theory).

Considering that the primary role of a marketing team is to help sales people to sell, they should absolutely be working for greater alignment. My experience has been (and still is) that sales management will play the internal politics card and say all the right things about alignment, when discussing with the CEO and marketing colleagues, but the reality is that except in rare circumstances, sales teams put marketing resources in a very marginalized role. For a sales person to see real and sustained value in a marketing team is something I have seen only once. Reports from IDC and the American Marketing Association indicate that 90% of marketing materials are not used by sales. Why is this?

The bottom line is, marketing teams create materials that are targeted at a prospect. Sales teams can certainly apply the same materials but they need a different format of content, delivered in different ways. There is a lack of understanding, on the part of marketing teams, that different materials are required at different times in a sales cycle. There is almost zero appreciation, by marketing teams, of the need to develop an emotional relationship with a prospect. The marketing remit is to identify differentiators, develop key messages, work with customers to produce case studies, run a social media program, interact with the media, setup trade shows etc - all activities that will help raise awareness of a company and its products, while developing demand that the sales team will follow-up on.

The sales team exists to qualify leads, establish a relationship, support a viable business case, align with a prospect's needs (real or perceived), and then secure a sale. A marketing activity may then kick-in to help retain that customer and to promote broader customer loyalty. But with 75% of sales playbooks being developed by sales teams (IDC), and with 30 hours/month being spent by sales teams to search for and/or create their own sales tools, it is clear that the synergy between sales and marketing is lacking.

What would improve that situation?

It could go one of two ways - either the marketing team moves closer to the day-to-day sales functions, shadowing sales teams, supporting sales teams during meetings with prospects, being involved with sales strategy; or they move completely away from it, focusing entirely on the awareness and demand activities, and generating better quality, higher value leads. This would then require a sales support team - a resource that would focus on capturing the skills and experiences of the sales team, and transforming that content in to assets that the broader sales team can take advantage of. The goal here would be to get the right content in to the hands of the sales teams, at the right time, and in the right format.

As Matt rightly says, smart marketers are realizing that their roles are increasingly being evaluated based on quantifiable impact and on sales and revenue (nicely said). If a marketing team is failing on those evaluations, there is often a knee-jerk reaction to create more, or new "stuff" for sales teams to use. The better reaction might be to facilitate the sales teams in their efforts to learn from each other, while the marketing team learns from the sales teams - input from the field is the most valuable for the evolution of marketing programs as well as for product management.

The more that Sales views Marketing as the providers of their artillery and ammunition for the sales messages, the more they will understand and appreciate the value of Marketing to the attainment of the Sales Department's goals.

Misalignment begins and ends, in our experience, with sales people not respecting or appreciating that the marketing folks 'get it'. The ivory tower statements, while harsh, are nonetheless very true. I had an engagement with a national financial firm whose marketing team was literally in a different building than sales, and the leaders got together at least once per quarter whether they needed to or not...

Working through the issue of marketing & sales doing their thing in their own little silos can make or break an organization; when we broke through the barriers at the financial firm, the organization saw record sales 3 quarters (and counting) in a row. The difference: marketing leadership sent their troops on field sales calls, listened to the sales reps about the front-line needs, and made immediate and impactful changes to the marketing efforts in response. Sales finally gained respect for what the marketers were doing because they had invested with the sales folks, and vice versa. Each saw that they had a voice in what the other was doing, and it made all the difference.

Ultimately, the whole thing boiled down to one issue: ego. On both sides. The sales teams feel like they can do it without the marketing collateral or input from "those geeks across the hall" (or in the other building), and marketers are loathe to leave their conference rooms to enter the field because they're following all of Drucker's advice, doing the right things (according to all the books) to drive sales. There have been moments when I fully expected one or more of the folks at the table to tell me they were going to take their ball and go home because those other kids just weren't playing by their rules.

So - lose the egos, guys (and gals), and start working together. Why more companies aren't forcing the issue (or bringing in consultants to facilitate) is beyond me, but one thing has become very clear from this discussion and my own experience: the companies who are most effective at removing the silos are the ones who will enjoy the greatest success in 2011 & beyond.

Sales cares about success. The smart ones care about how the rest of the organisation can make them successful. And if sales are successful, unless you've managed to completely screw up your sales targets and compensation plans, the organisation is successful.

But I'm going to expand on this and suggest that the measures, metrics and rewards of everyone that contributes to the revenue cycle ought to get paid on the basis of outcomes - and that includes marketing.

It's really hard to get sales and marketing aligned unless they share common goals and get their rewards (which aren't always in the from of compensation - they ought also to come from the feeling of having done a really good and useful job) from contributing to the organisation's shared success.

I am convinced that smart sales people are concerned about sales and marketing alignment, even if they don't use those words. They are certainly in my experience very vocal (and should be) when they observe the results of poor alignment.

Here's what I've seen work really, really well in the companies I've been involved with:

1. Ensure that sales, marketing and other customer facing staff all see their responsibility as helping to drive the revenue cycle and are goalled and rewarded accordingly

2. Ensure that sales and marketing develop a common shared understanding of who their most valuable prospects and customers are, what really matters to them, how and why they buy, and what they can do to accelerate the process

Tried to address this here: http://blog.glance.net/2010/06/3-big-reasons-to-align-your-sales-and-marketin...

I'd just like to pick up on Michael Fox's apparently undeniable truth - the way he put it that "the primary role of a marketing team is to help sales people to sell".

Sales is the all encompassing aim of a company. The salesman (and back then it was always a man) was the face of the company. He handled every enquiry, visited customers regularly and worked closely with the good customers to deliver projects. But he/she has become increasingly marginalised.

The reason is simple - sales staff are expensive and hard to control.
But they also have themselves to blame.

Focused totally on commission, they delegated tasks like supporting existing customers to inhouse teams. Companies set up "marketing" departments to create promotions and generate the buzz of awareness and interest which leads to sales. Sales people reacted by criticising the leads this process generated and insisting that they only dealt with qualified leads. In doing so they handed over power to marketing as the lead generation outfit.

Now they are finding themselves squeezed.

On the one side is automated selling. Even complex products like software are now sold by webinar followed by trial, without a salesperson involved. Major tasks like construction are done by strategic alliances and trusted Partners negotiated at board level, leading straight to pre-sales consultation on projects - again with no salesperson involved.

On the other side is the customer. They now research on the web, ask for recommendations on social media and put the project to the board and make a decision, all without the involvement of a salesperson.

So increasingly the marketing team has the upper hand. Sales teams are desperately trying to pretend the world hasn't changed and that they are still the boss. But it just isn't true any more.

I'm with Dennis. I believe marketers, in general, haven't answered the basic question the Sales team is asking, "What's in it for me?" No platitudes, long speeches, whiteboard diagrams.

Very interesting question, Craig. Left to their own devices, marketing will preach alignment and Sales will complain about lead quality. This is one of the reasons alignment is so difficult.

To address this, it takes strong leadership. Get them all in the same room and hash out the issues. Keep in mind that marketing automation will not solve this problem. It is plainly a people issue.

Jeff Ogden, the Fearless Competitor
Find New Customers "Lead Generation Made Simple"
http://www.findnewcustomers.com

"Business Alignment" is an abstraction that can be hard for many busy, hard-working marketing AND sales folks to assimilate and act upon. Abstractions tend to come from the top down and lose clarity and meaning as they roll down through the ranks. I have never heard a marketing director or sales account manager say to the other, "We are not aligned." I have heard sales people say that the brochure makes no sense to customers, or marketing people say they aren't getting enough feedback from sales.

Marketing's main jobs - period - are to give sales people tools and weapons that help them sell, to educate and motivate prospects so that they become purchasers, and and to do the same to customers so that they become brand ambassadors and lead generators.

Sales needs to learn and use the tools and weapons marketing gives them, to tell marketing when those don't work, (and why!), and to allow marketing access to customers for doing market research, learning use cases, and gathering testimonials

In my experience, if everyone understands, agrees with, and acts according to those two paragraphs, you get what the CxOs call "alignment".

In order
Alignment to the brand, alignment to the customer, alignment to goal, alignment to each other.
Carole

As a recovering Sales Manager and direct contributor, I can attest the above comment regarding does sales care about alignment. What sales cares about is receiving relevant activity from marketing. They will contribute to this movement if the effort results in a better chance for them to make their number. I believe Marketing serves Sales and also believe Sales will be on board if they understand whats in it for them.

Does Sales Care: No. Why, because as Dan pointed out, they are too busy focused on their quota. Wouldn't it be great to see such single minded unambiguous focus in marketing...In fact if Marketing had a quota, say for qualified leads, sales tools, and air cover brand awareness, there would be ZERO alignment issues.

Misalignment is a symptom of a problem: Sales is the most accountable organization in the company with the most measured goals; Marketing is probably the least accountable in many old school companies, and has the most nebulous goals. Sales are coin operated...."Alignment" discussions sounds like a waste of time. Either marketing is helping move the ball forward in the right direction, or they are in the way.

Hold marketing accountable for Revenue, Qualified Leads, Funnel velocity (sales tools) and alignment discussions will disappear because you have blurred the lines between the organizations and them is us, and we all win! Revenue Marketers, hurrah.

Generally speaking, no. Sales cares about the OUTCOMES of alignment - a steady flow of qualified leads, quality marketing materials, effective lead nurturing, etc... - but rarely cares about the process.

No they don't. It's a big marketing conversation. We care because we are trying to answer the question, "What have you done for me lately?" That question is being asked by the C-suite and by the sales team. We hope that through alignment we can associate marketing strategy, tactics and actions to both top and bottom line results.

The more key metrics sales and marketing jointly own, the more they seek alignment. that's up to senior management. It's not common for different functional departments to effectively align spontaneously; alignment happens by design.

I'm surprised that this is even question...almost confusing to me. I'd actually like to hear from a sales person that doesn't care about "Marketing/Sales Alignment" so I can understand their perspective which is very foreign to mine. I mean seriously, as a sales person I'd be pretty tee'd off if "marketing" constantly sent unqualified leads to me -- causing me to waste my valuable time/effort/energy disqualifying them. Yes?? I agree 100% with the various comments above eluding to the important fact that "alignment" doesn't happen via osmosis -- its by intentional design or it doesn't happen.

My simple answer to the initial question above: YES!!!

-Brad Lindemann

What a great question and conversation! I think the push for alignment is largely driven by marketing, but its more reactive than strategic, As a CRM implementation consultant I see the fallout from this misalignment in many of the companies who engage us.

Salespeople need qualified leads; marketers sincerely want to provide them. The alignment isn’t really difficult to implement but it does take leadership and perseverance to accomplish. We talk about establishing mutual goals and a dialog between the teams, but this conversation has to begin and end at the management level.

In the SMB arena, managers of Sales and Marketing departments often approach the challenge as if it’s merely a philosophical discussion. I’m privy to a lot of chin wagging about alignment. Sadly, it rarely results in process, structure, or feedback mechanisms to enable it. Well that ain’t leadership.

So there is no agreement if a web visit should be treated as sales-ready lead and assigned to a rep for follow up. Or whether marketers should develop lengthy contact forms for a visitor’s first web visit. (Neither gets my vote). Without communicating about these issues, it’s no surprise that Sales gets crappy leads & Marketing has alienated visitors before they convert to viable leads. Everybody loses.

Clearly, several things need to take place for sales and marketing alignment to occur. We’re in the era of social media and web 2.0; buyers are much more in control of the buyer process and both sales and marketing first need to get aligned with that concept. Some simple examples:

• Agree what denotes a sales-ready lead.
• Nurture leads with compelling content.
• Create a process and follow it.
• Test and adjust – no one is born knowing how to do this perfectly.
• Build in milestones for Marketing to be less activity-oriented and more results- oriented.
•.Create a closed-loop system to evaluate the complete life cycle of trade show or web visitor to lead, and from lead to won and lost sales.
• Use the analytics available in contact management and CRM systems to evaluate and learn, and improve.

It would be nice to see less griping and finger-pointing and more real collaboration.

And here's today's puzzler. Since marketing comes before sales, why do we call it Sales and Marketing rather than vice versa? :-)

As someone with 22 years in sales and sales management, I can provide my opinion on the subject from my experience and based on my perspective. I think Marketing can always improve, but I find the lack of alignment most usually comes from the Sales side of the equation; whether it be an individual salesperson, sales team, sales region or sales organization who wants to blame Marketing for their lack of success. The only time I've heard Marketing complain is when the sales organization is asking too much of it to compensate for their own lack of success.

Conversely, I hear the Sales side complain they don't have the necessary tools or resources that Marketing can provide to enable them to achieve greater success. However, I have found that the Sales side of the house puts too much of the blame on Marketing for their lack of success instead of looking in the mirror and holding themselves more accountable for results regardless of the Marketing strategy. I do think that Marketing needs to formulate their tactics and strategy based on the "real world" and not on some book or degree they have. They need to "get in the trenches" to understand the sales side better just as I would ask the salesperson to "get in the trenches" with a prospective client to understand their world better so that they can make more sales.

There's an interesting article this morning on BNet on why aligning sales and markeitng never works. It is written from a sales person's perspective.

http://www.bnet.com/blog/salesmachine/why-aligning-sales-and-marketing-never-...

I'd be interested in everyone's thoughts on it.

The author of the BNet blog, although supremely talented in most regards, is, respectfully, wrong on this issue - and must have worked for or with some pretty dysfunctional organisations.

Getting sales and marketing working together well isn't an issue of internal alignment. It's an issue of getting both to collaborate around a shared understanding about who their most valuable customers are, and how and why they choose to buy.

This isn't an issue of equality. It's a matter of collaboration, mutual respect and enlightened self interest.

Dave Packard had it right when he said that marketing was too important to be left to marketing. Or to be subservient to sales.

Hi Bob. I wrote a piece on this the other day, using your exact quotation.

Marketing as we know it was set up to get round short-term thinking in the sales department. Companies used to be set up just with a phone and telephone directory. That was sales.

But sales people are expensive and unaccountable. They’re out of the office when you want to talk to them. Work to their own agenda, not yours. Expect fortunes in commission as well as a salary. And often leave and take their clients with them.

Last, but not least here, they often have quite an ego. They are hard to manage. The corporate goals rank way below the personal ones. And they often have a short attention span. They like to be out there, not sitting in an office.

So when a lot of sales became one step removed from the face to face stuff, they weren’t the first choice. Companies set up marketing departments, whose job it was to bridge the gap between advertising and sales, turning interest into leads the salesperson could bring down. They created flyers and leaflet drops, designed direct mail pieces, did exhibitions – all the stuff the sales people didn’t want to do. They took existing customers away from sales too, setting up departments of admin people under the title of customer service. And sales people were taught that building relationships with clients wasn’t their job – it was all about closing.

When the digital revolution came along the marketers, not the sales people, were in the best position to profit from it. Direct mail became email, advertising became web sites and telemarketing became lead generation. That’s why sales has become part of marketing. It is not surprising that they are in denial about this and still believe they are the leader.

But there is an opportunity here...
Things have come full circle. Thanks to social media, we are back to conversational techniques. Building a rapport. Being known personally as the man/woman who knows stuff – who you can ask for a recommendation.

But, because we do it sitting in front of a computer instead of a client, most salespeople think it is not their job. Marketers aren’t comfortable with the one-to-one nature of it either. But just as the telephone was one step removed from face to face, social media is also one step removed. It is building a brand/rapport. It is lead generation/selling. It is an opportunity for both marketers and salespeople to get out of the old rut and build a new revenue generation department. So whether you are in sales or marketing, stop thinking it is someone else’s job and get in there!

Peter Johnson,
Regarding the BNet article. The one quote that resonates best with me is;

"The only real and practical alignment is for Marketing to step back, and respectfully ask the Sales team what they should be doing to help. Submission, not alignment."

In reading your comments, all indicators suggest you disagree with this sentiment. Am I correct?

I believe that both marketing and sales are broken. Buyers have rejected the idea of becoming anybody's lead and make decisions themselves from search and social media, only calling vendors in when the decision has been made. Any forward looking system has to look at how to ensure you are found when people look and then attract people down your path by demonstrating how you can solve their problem, that you are trustworthy and that yor solution gives them opportunities.

Salespeople are letting marketing take the lead here - decreeing that things like social media are marketing tools and all they have to do is sit there waiting for leads to close. It isn't like that anymore. Salespeople need to stop sitting there waiting for hot leads to fall in their lap and become part of this attraction and engagement process.

Peter,

I think it depends on the market, and I'm not convinced that sales and marketing are broken - maybe just a little bruised. I've read a lot of snake oil from social media specialists claiming that B2B buyers are now capable of making decisions without sales involvement, but recent empirical research from Sirius Decisions clearly demonstrates that for complex high-value sales involving senior B2B decision makers, social media is their least trusted source of information. I'm not denying its role, but I think you are over-claiming its case. Just my opinion.

Enjoyed all of the comments above on this topic. It's difficult to obtain true alignment unless both sales and marketing have a common vision and shared goals and objectives. One of the fundamental challenges for any marketing organization is the recognition of what they "do for" and "do to" the sales channels. Sales looks to marketing primarily for air cover - i.e. quality leads, new products and services, demand generation programs, and content. The more you can tie marketing's effectiveness to sales, customer and ROI targets, the stronger the alignment can become.

I think the question of sales-marketing alignment is looking at the problem from the wrong end. The real issue is sales and marketing alignment with buyers and customers. If sales and marketing organizations first focus on developing better alignment with markets, customers and buyers; there will be much better natural alignment between sales and marketing for driving more deals based on a mutual outside-in perspective of what each organization really needs to do.