The Sales and Marketing Chasm

It appears that every Marketing and Sales product vendor has a panacea for the chasm between marketing and sales. They don't.  So let's get an agreement on the forms the chasm takes, and list the areas of improvement that can bridge the gap.

Lead Generation is fundamental to marketing performance

The purpose of the marketing demand generation group(s) is to:

• Generate many new high quality leads
• Nurturing the in-house database to drive more opportunities out of it sooner
• Increase the velocity of opportunities in the funnel
• Maintain the loyalty of the installed base

To accomplish these we leverage a mix of awareness, assets, and programs through a variety of media: web, events, webinars, partners, in house database emails to opt-ins. We need to balance awareness and brand building against lead generation. We need to create training materials and sales collateral for multiple channels. The output from marketing from a Sales perspective, and by which they measure marketing, is:

1. Marketing Qualified Leads
2. Assets (collateral, Website)
3. Lead nurturing programs
4. Brand equity (awareness, attributes, loyalty, perceived quality)
5. Channel training (competitive info, product info, target market info)
6. Partner relationships

Whilst the relative priority of these things may vary from firm to firm, most sales folks would put leads at the top of the list. The 2009 CSO report indicates that Sales generate 52% of their own leads ( a significant increase in the past few years) and that marketing contributes just 24% (a significant decrease).  If you want to align marketing and sales, first and foremost measure your marketing team on that number. If you are producing lots of high quality leads for Sales, many of your other weaknesses can be overlooked. If you are failing to produce leads, or nurture leads into opportunities, the chasm from a sales perspective is that marketing does not understand what Sales needs - warm qualified leads.

Marketing has a finite budget to spend on these 6 areas. It behooves the VP of marketing to win agreement with the Sales peers on the relative importance of these marketing deliverables in the coming year. Sales and marketing alignment starts at the top. But this is only half of the bridge over the chasm.

What does Sales need to deliver to Marketing?

Marketing wants:

1. Follow up to all marketing qualified leads
2. A feedback mechanism that gives a measure on where the best and worst leads are coming from
3. Support and attendance at prospect events and training
4. Persistence with regard to prospects who are not quite ready to buy
5. Adherence to process
6. Clean and complete contact and account data in the CRM
7. Behavior that aligns with the brand
8. Accurate forecasts

As with the marketing list, the first one is very important. Lead generation can consume a large portion of the marketing budget, and the idea that Sales ignores 80% of these leads drives marketing crazy. This problem is resolved with a rock solid lead management process, an agreement of what a Marketing Qualified Lead is, and a process in the CRM/SFA to track timely sales followup to new marketing qualified leads (typically <2 business days). It also requires that Sales management step up and hold their team accountable for lead follow-ups.

Sales is arguably the most accountable organization in a company. Where else are up to half of the team turned over every year if they don't meet their goals? Marketing in B2B companies has probably been the least accountable, with the exception that the VP of marketing gets ejected after 22 months. My point is this. Don't expect what you don't inspect. Sales is very accountable because we have put systems in place to measure everything they do as it relates to closing business. Following up on marketing leads, quality and completeness of the data in CRM, accurate forecasting are important Sales metrics too and need more scrutiny from Sales management.

On the marketing side, Marketing Automation provides the measurability tools required to measure net new leads, lead quality, asset quality and usage, and efficacy of lead nurturing. So start measuring them, and holding marketing accountable for their deliverables to Sales. The facts will crush the finger pointers.
 

Comments

[B2B Marketing Service Lead]

I like to share and want to know more too...Sales promotion of a concern will be managed to gain the profit and the valid customer satisfaction too...within the important circle of the money also the publicity about the quality of the goods and services its...really good for the betterment of the goodwill.keep sharing.

[Cecil Grass]

What has also been a huge help to my colleagues and I are the sales lists
maintained at http://www.usdatacorporation.com/consumer_lists.php. They have the most comprehensive consumer lists I've ever used.

[Bill Todd]

Do you know what the single largest sales and marketing investment for North American travel businesses will be in 2010? I’ll give you a hint: it will be the same thing this year as it has been for the last twenty

For the answer click here - http://btodd.com/salestips2010.html

[Ron]

You are right - if either side fails neither will succeed. Sales and marking have to work togehter.