Sharing sales and marketing information: a process challenge, a technology challenge or both?

I have found that tight alignment between marketing and sales is paramount to success in any company. Success usually lies in understanding the true value that both marketing and sales brings to each other. You can have the best technology and process, but without a significant mind set of collaboration between the two, success will be short. Typically sales does not feel there is validity in much of what marketing does because they do not seek input and customer knowledge from sales. Making knowledge and data available is only part of the equation. With that right mind set, having the technology enable a highly-efficient process and methodology creates outstanding results.

First and foremost, before even getting into sharing between Sales and Marketing, one needs to ask ‘how big is the working gap between Sales and Marketing?’ Most organizations suffer from a natural gap neither caused by a process or technology issues. The issues between Marketing in Sales are typically caused by undefined accountability. The tension is particularly high between the two departments when sales performance is not up to par.

One of my favorite whitepapers about the natural Sales and Marketing gap is by Silverpop called “Why Sales Throws Marketing Under the Bus.” This is a humorous look at the common finger pointing and complaints between Sales and Marketing. This supports my thoughts that until there is clear definition about how the departments work together as a team and organically, process and tool effectiveness cannot be maximized.

What are potentially solutions then to bridge these gaps? Solutions include- team building events, face-to-face discussions versus email and video/internet conference, an open door feedback loop allowing for anonymity, and performance rewards between the departments.

Back on point, however, the processes and technologies are absolutely helpful and often underestimated. Lead conversion is the sweet spot Sales and Marketing shares. Both departments measure lead conversion as a key performance indicator. Therefore, this is an absolute, must have, ongoing dialogue for Sales and Marketing to have.

What I have seen to be most successful to bridge the communication gap to address the processes is having weekly meetings to review lead performance when both Sales and Marketing are participating is a best practice, and highly encouraged! When Sales says “the leads were bad this week,” then Marketing has the opportunity to ask, “why?” Usually the answer is not that the leads were “bad” but maybe there was not enough volume, lead distribution was not even across territories, and/or there was not enough data for Sales to have a more targeted conversation with the prospect. The more educated Marketing can be about what works to move a prospect to a qualified deal, the better the marketing can get! The more content educated and consistent Sales effectively communicates how they Marketing can measure and adjust lead quality, wah-lah, you have a communication gap closed!

Once an organization has started effectively closing the communication gaps, defining process and accountability, then tool effectiveness can be maximized. Marketing automation tools are a terrific way to automate these processes and provide on the spot, key performance measurements allowing organizations to quickly react to market changes, changes in staff, and the best part for those who usually have the buying power, board-level reporting! From my experiences, measuring Marketing ROI is incredibly difficult without such tools.

Some Marketing Automation tools I like include Genius, Eloqua, Marketo, and Silverpop. My reason for suggestion these is they are beyond just sending email campaigns, have built in, yet adjustable processes, and easily tie with most of the worth mentioning CRM packages like Salesforce.com and Oracle On-Demand CRM. The cloud is making it easier and easier to implement add-on Marketing Automation tools. However, professional services who implement really need to be properly assessed. Marketing Automation tool implementations gone wrong can wreak havoc on a CRM tool.

Summing it up- people, process, and then technology is the best practice approach to getting Sales and Marketing to work well together and grow successes. Really, not much has changed in the approach!

Certainly processes and technologies can interfere with or enhance the sales process.

But the greatest challenge to an effectively integrated marketing and sales effort comes from misconceptions about the relationship between
- marketing
- sales
- customer management.

The most dangerous misconception about marketing is that the job of marketing is done once a lead is generated, qualified and "thrown over the fence" to the sales team. This is old school thinking.

In reality, at the time marketing passes a lead on to sales, the marketing job has just begun. For more information, view the graphic at
http://www.amb-marketing.com/salesprocessmarketing.html

Once a lead is qualified and enters into the sales process, marketing needs to provide campaigns that
- automate as much of the sales process as possible
- to get the most value from the sales team at the least cost and
- to convert the highest number of leads to customers/clients.

After a prospect becomes a customer/client, marketing then has a new set of goals and they are:
- to enhace the customers' perceptions of company, product and service value
- to inspire referrals
- to improve cross-sell and upsell
- to extend average customer lifetime
- to reclaim lost customers

Clearly, the job of marketing is never done. To make sure marketing supports the company across the entire selling process, company goals, strategies, people, processes and systems had better be aligned across all three of these areas:
- qualified prospect acquisition
- sales
- customer relations.

Clearly any discussion about appropriate technology needs to come after this planning and alignment has been accomplished

We help companies understand, plan and execute on an aligned strategy for measurable business growth.

I see the marketing and sales process as all part of one process: The business process centered around the customer. It just happens that most (but not all) of the marketing responsibility is up the food chain.

CRM is an enabler of following this process and permits the capability of 360 degree visibility and to improve productivity by automatically pushing out critical information to others in the business process.

Technologies must be chosen to meet the business and its customers needs to strengthen relationships, imrpove productivity, increase sales and reduce costs (potential objectives). Whatever the key objectives are, just make sure that you align your technology intitiatives to those needs and the results...strong ROI.

Don't get caught up in all of the extra technology "fluff" if it does not benefit your organization and your customers. It will just be a huge time soaker. An example of this could be Social Media. SM is a great tool if you identify what your business associates (customers, colleagues, competitors etc.) are using. But you really need to understand where they are (LinkedIN, Twitter, Facebook etc.) beforehand or you may end up spending a lot of time and no returns.