Sales and Marketing Alignment: What tactics foster collaboration and cooperation?

1. Share common goals and rewards based around each role and each function's contribution to driving the organisation's revenue cycle. Have a single integrated sales and marketing plan. Jointly review and adjust it at frequent intervals

2. Manage marketing and sales activities as an integrated process that is aligned with the organisation's revenue cycle and which maps the prospect's typical decision making process

3. Recognise that marketing has a contribution to make throughout the sales process, that there is no single hand-off point between the two functions, and that opportunities may need to return to marketing for nurturing

4. Establish common agreed definitions of what and "Ideal Prospect" a "Marketing Qualified Lead" and a "Sales Accepted Opportunity" looks like

5. Develop a common shared understanding of who your most valuable customers and prospects are, what really matters to them, how and why they buy, and what can be done to accelerate the prospect's decision making process

6. Get the attitude right first, encourage collaboration and co-operation, have management recognise and reward great contributors, and put systems in place that support and nourish good habits. Just throwing technology at the problem won't solve it by itself

I totally agree with Matt. One of the biggest causes of misallignment between Sales and Marketing can be the egos of the heads of those two functions. Time spent by top management forging the management of these two vital functions into a single team will ensure collaboration and greater attainment of both sales and marketing goals. The biggest cases of failure that I've seen in this area have stemmed from a rivalry between Sales and Marketing....it becomes S & M and can get pretty bloody.

I think one of the most important functional processes a company can implement to foster sales and marketing alignment is lead scoring. This type of process is based on relatively simple algorithms in marketing automation solutions and is designed to move leads to sales from marketing at the right time. Marketing should, in all cases, work with sales to define what a good lead is and then build their lead scoring around those parameters. Once a lead scoring model is built, simple things like sending sales an email alert when a lead in their territory has scored and been assigned to them can really get sales excited and actively participating in the lead gen process. Beyond this, appending information to the lead record in CRM such as web activity history, campaign response...etc can give sales much-needed context for their first call. This type of technology solves a prevailing problem in sales/marketing alignment, which occurs when marketing tosses a bunch of unqualified suspects over the sales fence and then complains when all leads are not followed up on. Conversely, sales will complain about too much "junk" clogging their "to-do" list.

This is but one possible way to help this problem.

Hi Craig,
In these turbulent times, only integrated strategies can work, starting bottom up with the staff that comes in contact with the customers and with the full support of the top management.
It's not anymore bring your suggestions to the Managing Director but the Managing Director going down to the sales, customer service and marketing depts. to jointly discuss issues and set strategies.

There often is misalignment between these two functions/departments. But, these are not the only functions that can suffer from a lack of collaboration or cooperation. There are two activities that have been successful for me in situations like this.

First, a strategy planning session composed primarily of sales and marketing staff (but including other stakeholders also) serves to get both groups focused on the same corporate goals. Once the common goals and vision are established, the group can then begin to discuss strategies. Often the discussion unveils the dysfunction between the groups. But, good facilitation can help the group work through their divergent perspectives and begin building a collaborative environment. Once the groups are working together, ongoing effective communications and teamwork toward executing the plan can keep the synergies in place.

A second effective activity that I have used is process improvement. Engaging either the sales or marketing group in process improvement requires that their internal stakeholders/customers be involved in the activity, so you can start with either group. Mapping out the sales and/or marketing process will lead to the identification of pain points and problems within the process, which will point to the dysfunction between the functions/departments. Employing normal process improvement procedures will get the groups engaged in working together to resolve the issues.

I have found both of these practices effective in starting a collaboration, but the key to sustainability is in not letting procedures revert to the old ways. As others have pointed out, collaboration is everyone's responsibility, so everyone from the exec's on down need clear direction that retreat is not an option. Adding a couple of items in everyone's annual performance plan that addresses this is also helpful in motivating the groups to keep working together and working to resolve problems, issues or conflicts when they occur.

1. Conduct regular meetings (at least monthly) to review universal lead definitions and lead scoring/qualification criteria so that sales and marketing are sharing what's working and what's not.
2. Also, should discuss ( again at least monthly) on-going campaigns and how they have been performing so that sales is aware what's going on and get provide feedback on what they feel is working and what is not. At these sessions, marketing should get feedback on marketing developed content and find out what sales is actually using and/or adapting for their use.
3. Marketing should publish results at least monthly so that sales knows what's going on.
4. Marketing leadership should participate in all sales pipeline reviews to gather feedback and to answer questions. This is the best time for Marketing leadership to report on marketing's contribution to the sales pipeline.

As stated in another thread on this topic, IDC reports that sales ignores 90% of what marketing produces. Constant communications in sessions and meetings as i just described go along way towards changing that statistic.

Henry Bruce
@hebruce

I mentioned this in another post (http://www.focus.com/questions/sales/sales-and-marketing-20-does-sales-care-a...), but the more Marketing gets out in the field and works directly with sales and has direct contact with prospects and customers, the more Marketing teams will understand what Sales needs and be able to facilitate the process. At PropelGrowth, we encourage Marketing to listen in on sales calls. As they understand what the prospects are looking for, they instantly realize what kinds of content will better support the process and create vision for other leads.

Marketing generally is highly motivated to deliver a measurable impact on revenue, but they are often stuck working in the dark with inadequate access to the customer's voice - either because they don't pursue access or because Sales doesn't provide access.

Candyce Edelen
PropelGrowth
www.propelgrowth.com

Whenever this subject comes up it makes me think about a great blog post by Brian Carroll at http://blog.startwithalead.com/weblog/ back in April. I'll paste it below to save everyone from jumping around. It's a nicely drawn parallel between specific, tactical ways to drive alignment and mixing music on a sound board. What I like about this comparison is both efforts require what Brian calls "a process [that] can be continually improved through ongoing testing and refinement" ... in other words, alignment isn't something that everyone on both sides of the aisle does by sitting through a meeting. Alignment between groups who have a common interest is something that happens when enough processes, work flows and dependancies overlap that non-alignment isn't an option.

Here's Brian's post:

5 dials to tune in your lead generation process

It's important to think of lead generation as a process, rather than an isolated event, or a series of campaigns. A process can be continually improved through ongoing testing and refinement and will generate higher quality results more cost effectively (i.e. reduce expense-to-revenue ratio) and improve overall ROI.

Think about your lead generation process as being controlled on a mixing board. Let’s start with 5 of the biggest dials on the board so that we can start to tune in and turn up our lead generation ROI:

Dial 1 - "Turn up" lead quantity. Increase your program response rates across multiple lead generation channels to drive more inquires. Get more of the right people in the right companies to respond across multiple tactics through testing.

Dial 2 – “Turn up” lead quality. Improve your lead qualification process to increase “sales ready” lead conversion rates. Delivering leads that your sales team really wants based on your universal lead definition.

Dial 3 - “Turn up” sales team pursuit and feedback. Create joint service level agreement between sales and marketing to reduce time-to-sales follow-up. Ensure that "sales ready" leads are being fully engaged by sales.

Dial 4 – “Turn up” the number of certified opportunities in pipeline. Focus on improving your lead management and lead nurturing process. Build your marketing pipeline to increase your sales pipeline.

Dial 5 – “Turn up” closed sales. Focus on developing pipeline acceleration programs to shorten your time-to-revenue. This requires marketing to go beyond demand generation to help sales reduce friction in order to close more sales.

The mixing board analogy seems even more appropriate as you think about continuous process improvement. As the process develops you will need to consistently make adjustments to the dials as you respond to feedback and spikes in the flow. This is not a "set it and forget it" endeavor.

I hope this gets you thinking about making beautiful music

Read more: http://blog.startwithalead.com/weblog/2010/04/5-dials-to-tune-in-your-lead-ge...

Thanks, Brian. Your wisdom is always appreciated ... and repeatable.

Excellent responses above - I would add that there are some key steps that the sales and marketing organizations need to consistently work through together, that will not only help foster collaboration but build success as well.

1. Identify your ideal customer
2. Define a qualified lead and processes for generating and nurturing them
3. Develop messaging and execute a more comprehensive yet targeted marketing strategy
4. Create content that attracts, engages, and nurtures
5. Connect where prospects spend time
6. Implement an inside sales/teleprospecting strategy for lead follow-up and qualification
7. Hand off to sales
8. Close the loop, measure the results, and refine

These are highlighted in an excellent ebook, Authored by Stephanie Tilton, 8 Steps to Get Sales & Marketing Cranking in Unison which is available free at: http://bit.ly/bTrWPB .

As a former Sales VP I have lived this contentious relationship with Marketing. The tactic that got me collaborating was driven from our CMO. He simply asked me what I wanted from a lead definition perspective. I told him and he changed his programs to align. He also forced me to track these leads through their lifecycle so he could track his contribution. We actually pulled this off without C-level supervision.

The best experience I've had with sales and marketing being aligned is when I worked at a company where we had industry business unit teams. These were multi-functional work teams with sales, marketing, engineering, customer service, R&D and production.

So, one main tactic was having all of us on a single team, setting sales goals, forecasts, etc. as a team.

Another tactic was having weekly team meetings where we reviewed sales goals, marketing campaign results and existing projects. These team meetings kept us focused on the end result of increasing sales and profitability and creating an amazing customer experience.

There was something magical about this experience in that it was the first time that I had the experience of all of us working together; adjusting sales and/or marketing strategies. I'd say that we had an overriding level of respect for each member of that team and their level of commitment to our success.

1. Make marketing as accountable as Sales for revenue results
2. Measure the ROI of all marketing investments (yes, it is possible)
3. Hire marketing people with experience in the field
4. Rotate marketing people into the field, and field people into marketing
5. Tie all marketing bonuses to Sales success
6. Eliminate the stove pipes, form cross function task forces to attack new markets
7. Get a VP of Sales AND Marketing
8. Eliminate Us/Them discussions...it's one team!

Too many companies try quick fixes to help solve the Sales and Marketing Alignment Challenge. This may come in the form of a Lead Managements Process, Automation Technology or Sales Training. These solutions are often expensive; vendors led and have only a short term effect. They are in effect just putting lipstick on the pig, underneath you still have a pig.

You need to work on your underlying Culture, Language and People first, before you apply the lipstick.

Healthy living comes before cosmetic surgery.

1. Culture – You need a culture promoted from both the top down and bottom up that your commercial engine must work together and that each part is vital to making the revenue number. We have 3 Step Commercial Culture process for fostering coordination and cooperation for rallying these two expensive, powerful resources around the same goal.

2. Language – You need a shared language, definition and process ; the customer buying process and the way Marketing helps create demand and Sales helps cultivate and close that demand needs to look like a seamless end-to-end process that everyone understands and is working on. We have a proven Customer Buying Cycle process for identifying and instilling a shared vision and common approach that spans Marketing and Sales.

3. People – You need people bought into the process and committed to the outcome. We bring a Cross-Functional workshop approach that involves people from both sides throughout the process, so the effort is shared and the outcome is owned by both sides.

You can achieve greater Sales and Marketing Alignment; have Marketing contribute far more to your Revenue goals if you work on your Culture, Language and People.

Get Aligned!

One of the biggest causes of disconnect I've seen is that Marketing people don't give Sales things in a form they can use. This leads to Sales deciding Marketing consists of ivory tower types with no sense for what it takes out in the "real world" to sell things. Classic example is Marketing producing a huge set of complex sales tools - talking points, demo scripts, sales guides. I've seen sales offices with entire closets filled with shrink-wrapped sales guides (often packed with so many pages that they look like small novels...and showing that Marketing took no account of the time constraints Sales reps are under). So Marketing needs to get out and talk to Sales about what they really need and really will use and produce just those things in the forms (i.e., short, easy to consume) they want. In short, Marketing needs to treat Sales as their customer and produce for Sales, not to impress other Marketers.

Great dialogue and commentary above. The general role of sales and marketing are certainly very similar across most organizations. However, I'll throw the caveat in there that each organizations "culture" will further define the devil in the detail pertaining to exactly how this question needs to be answered "for that organization". This will then drive the tactics for collaboration and cooperation.

Generally, here are some thoughts on these tactics which MUST be 100% supported by the #CSuite:

1) Mutual understanding and alignment of the organizations "burning imperative" (I define as the mission, vision, objective, strategy, goals, values)

2) Defined accountabilities and responsibilities; who owns what? This includes budgetary concerns.

3) Defined communication plan; this will not happen "on it's own" so a combination of formal and informal communication process/channels must be established. I am a big fan of some sort of "steering committee" or "sales & marketing board".

4) Agreed upon definition of success: not only the bottom-line goals, but the leading indicators & performance metrics on the daily/weekly/monthly/quarterly results dashboard to be reviewed in item #3.

5) An effective reward mechanism that is tied to all of the above. I find all too often that organizations put "flawed" reward systems in place such that "marketing" can bonus even if "sales" fails and visa versa. I believe a true "sales & marketing team" should win/lose together. Either everyone wins a world series ring or no one does.

6) Hire the right people for the culture of the organization and all that is illustrated above. In today's competitive environment, there is no room for bad apples and/or dead weight.

Just a few thoughts.

-Brad Lindemann