Sales and Marketing alignment is a term that gets thrown around a lot and, having been in this space for quite some time, I think the practicalities behind executing this alignment often get lost in the lingo. I’m of the opinion that nearly everyone on a high level understands why it’s important to have sales and marketing working closer together. But the actual steps behind what needs to be done are either not clear or simply assumed.
Marketers think salespeople don’t appreciate what they do. Salespeople think that marketing is just putting together pretty pictures or blog posts with little commercial impact. The reality is that both functions usually perform commercially critical tasks but at some point the silo creeps in, particularly as orgs grow and this often leads to a complete lack of communication across the functions.
However, the reality is that with a few simple, practical steps businesses can begin to bring these functions together. The ultimate goal being that marketing creates value (qualified, nurtured leads) for sales who are then able to create bottom line revenue. The data flow needs to be seamless both ways - not just marketing to sales - but sales also ensuring that they are feeding back the opportunities and pipeline that is won/lost to further optimise the marketing strategy.
So here are some tips that I would recommend implementing right away:
This might seem like an obvious one - and it is. However, it’s never a given. Ensure CMOs and CROs keep those weekly catch ups in the calendar and attend. Discuss what revenue has been generated as a result of marketing activity in the past week, what sectors are performing or not performing, where could marketing adjust their focus to as a result, what clients have converted and why, who is performing the best with marketing leads - could they perhaps do a sharing session with the wider team as to what successes they have found.
Data is the key to all successes in this alignment endeavour. Your CRM needs to play a central role in allowing marketing to feed data through to sales and back again. Salesforce, Hubspot, Marketo and many more all integrate with LinkedIn so you can get your generated leads easily into your CRM or marketing automation tool. In my opinion (and from personal pig headed sales experience) the most challenging part is getting sales to input the critical data into the CRM. This is also the most crucial. To have alignment you need to understand ROI and sales inputting the generated pipeline or closed value for the generated leads gives us that golden number. This is what allows CMOs to make the case for more budget and delivers more and more inbound leads with a higher quality.
Often, marketing will pick a topic that they are seeing as trending on a platform to create content around. This is good and should be encouraged but is only one piece of the puzzle. Marketing needs to be led by the numbers. Where is our ROI coming from? Perhaps it’s the Healthcare vertical or the Auto side - creating content to double down on your best performing sectors is a sure fire way to create growth in that segment. Again, this only works with the right data flow as mentioned above.
The best B2B brands have exactly that - a brand. Take IBM, Dell, Microsoft - all have fantastic brands that have been built by decades of brand marketing. I am often challenged with the point that brand marketing is impossible to measure and therefore does not deliver the short term value the business needs. My response is - how do you measure the impact of not having a brand? It is the difference between your business being a choice and being the obvious choice. Brand marketing is not only proven to deliver long term sales uplift for your business but is a bulwark against future discounting and economic downturns. And for the measurement side there is a practical step too - simply divide your ROI from your leads into your entire marketing investment, not just the lead gen activity. This gives you a concrete measurement of what return you are getting across all marketing.
Training sales and marketing in their respective roles. I’m not talking about full on formal training but rather creating an appreciation for the other. A workshop per quarter that covers off the fundamentals of what each team is currently working on. Their successes and learnings. This session should be followed by splitting the teams into smaller mixed groups to collaborate and share on ideas for future campaigns. These sessions have proved enormously helpful in my experience in a) creating team culture and b) often lead to execs implementing these strategies in their business plans.
Lastly but by no means least - our difficult but loyal friend ROI. He is the be all and end all. Without him we are a rudderless ship sailing through a tempest. Harness that beast and the land of Utopia lies beyond.
Although that might be slightly exaggerated, I cannot stress enough how important it is to keep this number front and centre with everything that is happening. If it does not deliver positive returns over a predefined period, then cease immediately.
Measurement, data flow and team collaboration are all pieces that lead to gaining this final number.
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