According to Forrester Research, only eight percent of B2B companies say they have tight alignment between sales and marketing. That means that 92 percent of organizations have a sales and marketing alignment problem. And an alignment problem is a business problem because, without alignment, a company cannot effectively execute.
First, it’s important to discuss what approaches do not work. Alignment cannot be achieved by merely integrating your marketing automation system with your CRM solution. It’s not about defining a new lead management approach. Simply creating more content and tools won’t align anything.
True sales and marketing alignment require a fundamental shift. Here are some strategies and tactics that can help you get on the alignment path.
Adopt The Right Goal To Align Your Sales And Marketing.
Too often, sales and marketing each have individual goals that seem compatible. Marketing creates sales messaging and tools and generates leads for the sales team. Sales teams use the messaging and tools to transform those leads into revenue. In practice, however, it rarely works this way.
You hear the following complaint from both sides: “we’re doing our job, but they just don’t get it.” The problem with these goals is that they foster an us-versus-them attitude and miss the big picture. Ultimately, these two teams share – and must be aligned to achieve – one purpose: to get customers to choose you.
Make Sales And Marketing Message Development A Team Effort.
Most organizations develop messages in a silo with little input from key stakeholders across the value chain, in particular, those who have conversations with customers. But effective messaging requires your teams to work together.
Salespeople, who talk to prospective and current customers every day, brings insight into the real-life problems that customers are looking to solve. And, as the people who will choose to use – or not use – the tools that marketing teams work so hard to develop, including them in the process will ensure that the materials produced will, in fact, be used.
Run An Effective Relay Race.
When sales and marketing compete with each other, the company can’t effectively compete in the market. An aligned sales and marketing organization, on the other hand, works as a team and takes a relay-race approach. Marketing develops the content and tools that create the buying vision, then sales takes the baton and engages with the customer to get them to choose you.
Pick An Effective Starting Point.
I know what you are thinking: “This sounds good, but where do we start?”
According to a SiriusDecisions survey, the most significant inhibitor salespeople see to achieving their quota – that is, getting enough customers to choose you – is the inability to communicate value messages.
As an aligned team, identify the key weak spots in your value messages and then work together to develop the messages, content, and sales tools to create and communicate the buying vision.
At Corporate Visions, we know that aligning these two pivotal teams together can be challenging. That’s why we’ve crafted a portfolio of solutions designed to help organizations achieve true sales and marketing alignment.
Tim Riesterer
Chief Strategy Officer
Tim Riesterer, Chief Strategy Officer at Corporate Visions, is dedicated to helping companies improve their conversations with prospects and customers to win more business. A visionary researcher, thought leader, keynote speaker, and practitioner with more than 20 years of experience in marketing and sales management, Riesterer is co-author of four books, including Customer Message Management, Conversations that Win the Complex Sale, The Three Value Conversations, and The Expansion Sale.