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What are the 3 tangible actions an organization can take to improve sales-marketing alignment?
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The Key to Sales and Marketing Alignment
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12 Answers
Good question. It's hard. That's why if you do a search for "sales and marketing alignment", you'll see they've been talking about this for more than 20 years.
1. Get agreement from the CEO that this is important.
If you don't get buy in from the head of the company, trying to do this is an academic exercise. And you'd be surprised how many CEOs aren't interested in the change management exercise that makes up the backbone of really bringing marketing and sales into alignment. Advice: If your CEO is one of these, quit your job, short the company's stock and be grateful that you escaped the pit of doom that the company will become.
2. Promise sales that if they tell you what they want, marketing will deliver it.
Doesn't matter what it is. Do they want a list of names? Provide it. They looking for fully qualified leads with all BANT (budget, authority, need and timeframe) criteria defined? Fine. it just costs money. But the flip side is once sales agrees to it, you write it down, sign it, send it to everyone who may be called in a deposition in the future, and make it law. Because marketing departments who are trying to fix a problem with sales often have low credibility, this is critical.
3. Report on the same metrics.
If you ask sales and marketing leaders what they report to the management team (or the Board), very often you'll get things like this from them:
Marketing: downloads, names of trade show attendees, "touches" (unless you are in the spa industry, this probably isn't an important metric), web traffic, social media mentions
Sales: closed deals, total revenue, opportunity pipeline, sales forecast, qualified leads
Make sure the management team cares about, and talks about, the same measures.
and here's one bonus action that's been a controversial topic these days:
4. Bite the bullet and give marketing variable compensation
There's a lot of resistance to this in the marketing world. The logic goes, "we can open the door to a lead, but sales has to close it." That's pithy. And hogwash. Marketing can do a lot to affect lead volume, quality, velocity and close of business. If it means one less doodad they produce and get out in the field to help close, so be it. By paying marketing in part on closed business, the organization puts its money where its alignment is.
Lastly, and with all due respect to the super smart other commenters here, you can't tell your marketing and sales organization HOW to do this. Alignment is a code word for change management and the only way you can be successful is if all stakeholders have a part to play in figuring out the tactics to implement.
If you try to impose things on the organization (like forcing marketing and sales to attend each other's meetings), you increase the chances of fomenting resentment among people who are very creative at inventing ways not to do things.
Good question and agree with Steve that is hard but very achievable.
1. First and foremost stop addressing alignment as if it is the issue itself. Alignment is a symptom of greater issues in the organization. If it was indeed the problem, one would think it would have been solved by now given the amount of documentation that exists on how to solve it. Once organizations begin to solve the greater problems that exist, the alignment symptom will go away.
2. Develop a process. As Kathleen references above, the collaborative development of a process is one of the core issues that causes the gap that exists in many organizations. With marketing and sales working together to address:
- Data Management
- Lead Planning
- Lead Routing (SLA's)
- Lead Qualification (including scoring and definition of every stage of the funnel)
- Lead Nurturing
- Content Blueprint
- Metrics
This lead management process framework allows for all in the org to know what success looks like and how the buyer relationship will be managed.
3. Align compensation. Marketers should not be permitted to only measure clicks and open rates on their email campaigns or be able to stop measurement with the number of inquires. Some level of their compensation must be tied to impact on revenue and pipeline.
Carlos Hidalgo
The Annuitas Group
@cahidalgo
Extend the definition or boundary of the pipeline to reflect the entire “client acquisition cycle”; creating a singular accountability.
Create a single incentive plan based on measurable results, extending Kathleen’s second point.
Beyond attending sales calls, marketing should have joint ownership for renewal up-sells and penetration.
let's start with a definition for alignment - here is the one I've been using for several years.
“Sales and marketing collaboratively working toward the common goal of profitably increasing revenue and customer lifetime experiences through shared processes, resources, service level agreements and metrics.“
(c)-Christine Crandell
1.Take the subjectivity and opinions out of the conversation: document the agreement of what is a good lead; bring data to every discussion; create reasonable service level agreements for both sales and marketing and measure compliance
2. Align goals: measure outcomes, not activity
3. Increase communication: regular meetings at multiple levels of the two organizations, co-locate where possible, train marketing along with sales, deploy collaborate tools
Here's a viewpoint: Sales are like pilots and marketing is like air traffic control: http://bit.ly/hGW6pF
3 Tangible Things Marketing and Sales Can Do:
1. Get executive management in a room, with business teams; sales along with operations, finance and customer service - Give everyone a pad of sticky notes - Use an egg timer and ask everyone to write what first word, comment or answer that comes to mind on their sticky pads, one thought per sticky note, when asked these three questions - What can we do to drive and accelerate revenue? What can we do to provide better customer service? What do our customers want from our organization? . Ask collective group to vote which three are the most important to their organization. Combine all sticky notes on one flip chart and rank top three answers for each question.
2. Ask executive management to sit in and moderate a meeting between sales and marketing. Ask each team to define their roles, accountability and define denition of lead gen, marketing lead, marketing qualitied lead and marketing accepted lead. Do the same for sales, ask how marketing leads will convert over to sales leads. Ask where is process getting stuck today and how would they like it changed in the future. Ask them where they are not clear on their roles and what they would like to help bring clarity to their roles. Again, collect and rank in order of importance.
3. Send a survey to sales and marketing teams and ask where the SFA/CRM/Marketing Automation/Process is working and where it is not working and why. If they had $100,000 where would they spend this and why? Content Development, sales training, etc. this will help you determine the priorities of each team and where they are and are not aligned.
Finally, ask everyone to write down the name of a company that comes to mind who has excellent marketing and sales alignment. From here, ask if anyone has a connection to an executive of these companies. Ask this person to help setup a call so your executive staff can speak to company that comes to mind with excellent marketing and sales alignment. The goal of the meeting is to share insight on the process, pain and success in building an aligned marketing and sales team.
Carlos is right, the very idea of creating alignment between sales & marketing is part of the problem. The organizations that have best solved this challenge aren't tackling a sales & marketing alignment problem, but have instead prioritized a proactive, cross-functional approach to customer acquisition overall.
They have created an organizational philosophy that makes a common approach to the customer acquisition funnel a fundamental part of doing business, not a quarterly initiative.
But most organizations aren't starting from scratch; they're trying to make existing teams and processes more effective. Below are the three priorities I believe most quickly & successfully lead to a consistent approach and accelerated results.
1. Gain active executive sponsorship
Ensure someone above sales & marketing has prioritized alignment. It can be a CEO, COO or CFO. But this person needs to not just be a passive "copied on email" supporter. Ideally, they are helping to drive the process and ensure participation from all parties.
Link 2. Create common reporting & success metrics
I'm not talking about a document that has half marketing and half sales objectives. What's required for trust alignment is a common set of metrics that both sales and marketing are measured against. Marketing has to take responsibility for closed business, sales must take responsibility for lead quality and conversion, and so on.
3. Operationalize a single, integrated acquisition team
This is more than just weekly meetings. Sales & marketing team members need to tackle customer acquisition challenges together on a daily basis. This means listening to or attending sales calls, having frank and metrics-driven conversations about lead channel quality, etc.
This whole conversation on the so called marketing and sales alignment issue reminds of two anectdotes
I hate when you can't finish a comment you started. Here's what I was trying to say. I feel this whole alignment discussion is focusing on the wrong things as a few have stated. Though it would be nice if the CEO were in the room with sales and marketing to make sure they are playing nicely, the CEO expects that his two VPs are focused on the corporate objectives, specifically the revenue targets and are working together to make the results happen. If the targets are not met, everyone will be asked to account for what they did not do. This is where marketing continually makes a tactical mistake when dealing with sales and the CEO. I believe that it's up to marketing to make the relationship with sales work and that means demonstrating how the demand generation plan puts more closable business in sales pocket. It's about results and having the metrics and data to show the impact on revenue. Anything less is just talk that sales ignores
. This debate reminds of the dialogue between Red Sox and Yankee fans before 2004. Sox fans and the Boston media talked of the rivalry with the hated Yanks while Yankee fans simply yawned. Most did not see a rivalry as the yanks always won and Sox just talked ... And lost. Then 2004 and2007 happened and now Yankee fans are listening and buying into the rivalry. Marketing needs to be more Machivellian in their dealings with sales. Make sure that programs deliver results every 90days or less, especially when introducing new programs or capabilities like marketing automation. For example run a dead leads campaign and make sure that some of the activity is for 1 or 2 of the top reps. We usually find several deals that were ignored by those reps. When they close those, then you have sales attention to what you are trying to do with your lead management and lead nurturing program.
Forgive me for perhaps taking a new tack:
First assertion: all sales is marketing and all marketing is sales
Second: it always is easier to say than do
Third, the idea of "alignment" may be less ideal as a metaphor to help us envision the desired end-state than Frank Cespedes' metaphor of "the marketing gearbox" (his us of the "m-word" is the reason for my first assertion), which he more completely describes in his book "Concurrent Marketing".
I have followed and use his advice with every client:
* cooperation and coordination between and across all functional areas is critical for success. One roadblock most organizations face is the fact that each functional area has its own set of metrics and tries to optimize its individual results with a noticeable lack of regard for those other areas with which it needs to cooperate and coordinate its actions relative to customers....
And that puts us back to the easier said than done portion of this debate.
Implementing this change successfully will take time, communications, training, reinforcement, training, more communications, and a balanced scorecard type of metrics; and then more communications and training. best, ngp
1. Place the responsibility for the departments under a single VP of Marketing and Sales. The two must now work together or risk the retribution of their superior.
2. Place the offices of the heads of marketing and sales next to one another.
3. Make it mandatory that marketing management attend sales meetings.
These things force the sales and marketing managers into cooperation of necessity that would not normally be probable if they were not forced to work together. Remember what Machiavelli said, "Men never do good unless necessity drives them to it; but when they are free to choose and can do just as they please, confusion and disorder become rampant."
Three tangible actions:
First key action - change the mindset.
Parallel lines are in perfect alignment - but they never interact.
Until we consider ourselves part of a unified prospecting department we will never succeed.
Second key action - change the mindset.
People buy through testing ideas of their own, through collaborating and through asking questions much more than through listening or reading. Remember how we always learned more from our practical classes, than from writing down what was on the board.
I hear and I forget. I see and I remember, I do and I understand.
The greatest opportunity presented by the internet is to interact. To build relationships with people we've never met.
Stop presenting. Stop talking at. Stop publishing.
Start conversing. Start engaging. Start building relationships.
Third key action - change the mindset.
Stop thinking in terms of building engagement towards a face to face appointment. By the time you get there the decision is mostly made.
Stop thinking in terms of marketing campaigns. The internet is 24-7-365. People are checking you out over breakfast. After they've put the kids to bed. Every day, even holidays and weekends (even if its B2B). You need to interact with all of them in their timeframe and in the way they want you to - they are not data for a campaign.
Stop thinking in terms of a relay race with customers being handed from department to department and person to person. people choose someone they trust and believe they can solve their problem. They build that engagement with every touch. Every handover means they have to start from scratch. Or, of course, make the decision to go elsewhere. Building trust takes consistency.
Last, but not least, stop bowing before the great god technology. That won't magically transform broken company structures - it will magnify the errors you make.
Remember it is Technology Aided Prospecting. Get the prospecting bit right first.
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