By Max Leone
4 Pillars That Create Stronger Alignment in Your Sales & Marketing - How Will These effect Your Organization?
Misalignment between sales and marketing entities has been a challenging issue in many businesses for some time!
Not having strong synchronization between these two extremely important mutual forces will definitely prevent optimal results for the company's brand position and new sales opportunities.
In fact, it will cause many more problems including; immense frustration; wasted time; customer trust & loyalty; money; pointless energy and will derail the consistent reliable growth path of your organization.
Why is it so Important to Bring Sales and Marketing in Alignment?
Aligning Sales and Marketing is an important step to ensure that the company is maximizing its potential to grow and properly communicate its value based message to the correct targeted audience.
The sales team is a crucial part of the company as they are responsible for generating sales and revenue. On the other hand, the marketing team focuses on building awareness and brand equity.
Brand equity is vital as it’s the commercial value that derives from consumer and business perception of the brand name, product or service rather than from the product or service itself.
The two teams are different in their objectives but they can work together to achieve common goals such as; bringing new contacts and opportunities; establishing trust with prospective customers; closing contracts and deals; and ultimately generating revenue.
The key question is how do you make sure that these two teams or forces are working together?
One of the most popular strategies is to hold regular meetings where both parties can share what they have been doing and discuss future plans. Another strategy would be to establish clear goals for each team, this way there will be no confusion about what needs to be done by each party.
The sales and marketing teams are like the yin and yang of any company. They sincerely should compliment each other for a successful business outcome.
The sales team is responsible for acquiring new customers and to secure new contracts and business, where as the marketing team is responsible for helping to identify and engage viable customers and to make them aware of value.
Harvard Business Review Study
A study by Harvard Business Review found that companies with strong alignment between these two teams/forces were three times more likely to achieve their revenue goals than those without alignment.
This study also cited an example of a sales and marketing misalignment scenario that highlights the potential disaster this misalignment can create.
Case Study:
Company : B2B Fortune 250 Company
- Case Overview: New product line was launched with full marketing efforts & attention. The product line failed and it was the belief of the company that the problem was either poor delivery times or lack of effort by sales team.
- Cost To Solve Problem: Several hundred thousand dollars were spent to assess if it was delivery of the product or poor effort by the sales group. The company finally realized that both of the perceived problems were actually incorrect.
- Real Problem Uncovered: Misaligned goals between sales & marketing. The price of the new product was structured to rapidly grow market share however the sales compensation goals were structured to incentivize them based on maximum profit margin. This resulted in frustration by sales so they then focused on other products that were in line with their overall target margin goals.
- Result of sales and marketing misalignment: In the long run, $250,000 was spent to solve the wrong problem.
Obviously, it's very important to bring these two teams together because it will help both departments understand what the other department needs in order to be successful. It will also make sure that customer needs are being met by both departments, which will lead to higher customer satisfaction and retention rates.
The goal of this collaboration in sales and marketing is to create a shared understanding of how both departments work, what their processes are and what each department needs in order to achieve success.
New Data on 4 Key Elements to Address Misalignment
Recently, the LinkedIn organization commissioned The Forrester Consulting Group to survey key marketing and sales decision makers of technology, financial and professional services from around the world.
This study reinforced some amazing data points and critical information on how a solid sales and marketing alignment structure provides huge potential growth paths for your company.
- 85% said sales and marketing alignment is the largest opportunity for improving business performance today!
- 90% of sales and marketing professional agree that when initiatives and messages are aligned, the customer experience is positively impacted.
HOWEVER
- 9 in 10 sales and marketing professionals say that they are misaligned across strategy, process, content and culture.
- 98% & 97% of respondents (sellers and marketers respectively) think that bad alignment negatively impacts the business and the customer.
These very definitive replies by multiple sales and marketing professionals, in various industry segments worldwide, strongly indicate the need for comprehensive alignment.
The baseline tenets of these 4 “Pillars”
So, when considering alignment between sales & marketing, the time may be best spent by focusing the aligned efforts of 4 key areas.
- Strategy
- Processes
- Content & Messaging
- Culture
Strategy: best realized through common measurements
A. Aligned sales and marketing strategy starts with shared goals
B. Agreed parameters and campaign targets that are directed at the same audience and accounts
C. Alignment realized through connected measures and shared metrics
Processes: as good as the systems that drive them
A. Align all processes towards the customer journey rather than inward focusing
B. Leverage different sales processes and marketing processes to accelerate:
- the target customer/industry buying process
- creating value
- helping customers to achieve success
- sharing the same data and acting on the same criteria and platform
Content and Messaging: should support conversations
A. Marketing should include collaboration with sales to determine core themes for campaigns and content layout to brainstorm together on ideas and maintain alignment
B. Engagement of sales and marketing through the implementation process is key to gathering feedback
C. Adopting a long term viewpoint and always consider and champion the view of the customer
Culture: foundation of trust and value
A. Lessen the cultural divide of sales and marketing by each having greater empathy and understanding for the others trials, tribulations and triumphs
B. Attend each other meetings
C. Participate in joint initiatives
D. Recruit willing champions and executive sponsors to drive greater alignment
E. Mutually focus on a better understand and a shared sense of customer value and everyone’s roles in that understanding
Conclusion
Incorporating alignment in the 4 key areas defined, should naturally bring better trust, collaboration and the achievement of targeted goals for sales and marketing teams.
In any communication and interaction with customers, building and establishing trust with them should be the prime directive. Trust is what makes customers engage and build long lasting relationship with your company. There should be a clear impact realized by the customer on the value they will derive.
So the ultimate secret to better sales and marketing alignment may be simply to focus on these 4 “pillars” of; strategy, processes, content/messaging and culture.
Bottom line... both sales and marketing entities should make a conscientious effort to mutually start thinking about real customer value and trust and stop just thinking about gathering leads. Your results will ultimatly be more fruitful.
Sales and Marketing Alignment = Communication - Trust - Value!
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