Date post: | 12-Nov-2014 |
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Business |
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A take on
In this week’s #B2BChat, sharing ideas and thoughts on sales and marketing alignment is the agenda. This presentation takes a Nexsales shot at answering the questions they have raised as part of these conversations
• Why is sales and marketing alignment difficult for most organizations?• Who should take the lead in the alignment process—marketing or sales?• What are marketing’s main complaints about sales?• What are sales’ main complaints about marketing?• What role do leads play in the effort to align marketing and sales?• Does automated lead management help or hinder sales and marketing alignment?• Should the marketing and sales teams share common goals and compensation plans?• How do you measure sales and marketing alignment?• How can sales and marketing alignment impact the bottom line?
Incongruent goals: Although sales and marketing
teams are both charged with driving and sustaining business success, they often have goals that are sub-sets of each other
Disconnected processes, technologies and data: Sales is usually seen
concentrating their efforts in building relationships on a first hand basis
Marketing on the other hand prefers automated and scalable processes to be able to reach wider
Lack of shared, meaningful metrics: As with incongruent goals,
dissimilar metrics, different revenue targets, indefinite reporting allow sales and marketing teams to go in different directions
People differences and teamwork challenges: The Sales teams, most often, is
paid when the deal is closed (as per incentives), but the Marketing teams, who are responsible for handing over ‘Sales-Ready’ leads to dept, are usually paid a fixed salary
In a typical B2B Scenario, Sales should begin with listing down the targets and defining the objectives
Marketing should allocate their work and targets depending upon the targets sets by Sales
Only after a definite approval from the management including a sales and marketing representative, can both work together contributing to the regarded Firm
Hence, in this collaborative process no one particular team may necessarily take the lead but both sales and marketing and expected to co-operate
Connection Between Marketing and Sales: If Sales and Marketing are known to have something in common then that is none other than ‘Leads’
Leads have proven to bring the two departments closer in terms of setting similar targets and achieving them
Sales needs to recognize that Lead Generation Management technology and content-based Lead Nurturing are best practices to achieving Above the Funnel goals
To make these tactics successful however, Marketing must align to the way their Sales team goes to market
If there is one solution that can help marketing and sales teams integrate, it is automated lead management
Also, the sales and marketing automation software team together decide what would be the ideal lead score that can be considered sales-ready
By doing this, the gap is further reduced and better alignment between both teams can be achieved
Although this increases efficiency, it also reduces personalization to a certain extent hindering the sales’ high-touch method of approach
Sharing common goals and compensation plans for marketing and sales is absolutely critical because it effects the bottom line
This enables closeness amongst the two departments and may ensure a long term healthy relationship rewarding the company with desired returns
But certain things have to be kept in mind while sharing goals and responsibilities: Budgets allocated to the marketing department may depend on the
revenue generated previously converted leads. Individual compensation plans may be used as incentives differently for
each respective department Conversation of leads may include sharing incentives to both
departments Hence, to safely conclude, sharing common goals and
compensation plans may be a variable depending on the budget
Also budget constraints may be set depending on profit or loss of the previously generated leads
Measurement through all implementations is king. The effective mantra is to measure well and measure often
When your marketing and sales software feed data into each other, you can measure a single grouped set of data
This will enable your extended teams to know which approach, campaign, or materials is most effective
This ongoing measurement enables the sales and marketing disciplines to work as an ever-improving team and helps alignment
Aligning marketing and sales makes good business sense and ultimately improves the bottom line
A study conducted on sales effectiveness found that companies that had strong collaboration between these two functions achieve higher sales effectiveness
By improving marketing and sales alignment in a relatively quick period of time, the company can begin to reap the benefits of more revenue and profits
For many companies this additional boon in sales more than justifies making the effort.
Higher throughputs means the company is spending its money a lot more wisely than it usually did
This helps cost-cutting in the appropriate lines Eg: Leads that haven’t been converted but
have potential can be put back into the marketing funnel instead of being discarded
NexSales is a demand gen consulting and delivery firmAt NexSales, we enable complex sales and marketing solutions to help clients meet their
aggressive growth needs by leveraging our deep domain experience, proprietary database and innovative technology. We provide solutions in the areas of database, lead generation,
digital marketing and social media marketingWe’ve helped our clients achieve 30-80% growth in their sales pipeline while empowering
them with leading edge practices.
www.nex-sales.com