Behind the times,
Marketing and Sales have changed, in fact, they’ve evolved over the last generation. A lens of production volume and high quantity product movement is now marketing customer centricity and relationship selling. Yet, even with the huge shift from product/ion-centric to customer-centric, the flow of traffic has continued to be unidirectional.
That is to say, Marketing is primarily focused on continually understanding the marketplace, refining a value proposition, and integrating communications to deliver that value. Sales receives MQLs generated from those communications, guides the leads through the sales process, and captures the final sale. End.
Now you see the problem… the two are operating like 18th century firefighters, passing along buckets of water and showering it into the fire, hoping that more buckets will lead to more success. At no point does the information flow come full circle to let Marketing know about what is and isn’t working, leaving Sales to make do with what they receive. We call this a lack of sales and marketing alignment.
The blame game,
Perpetuating this kind of one way sales content management isn’t exactly a complete recipe for disaster, that is, until revenue is down for the quarter. Sales immediately blames Marketing for poor lead acquisition and missed-mark communications. Marketing blames Sales for failing to nurture the leads to fruition and a lack of relationship building skills. Everyone goes back to their holes and festers in resentment, and the cycle repeats.
One team,
Oddly enough, somewhere along the lines they forget that they’re on the same team, and want the same outcomes. This is where that sales and marketing alignment comes back into play.
When both departments work together, it creates synergy and enhances the entire process. This synergy generally involves Sales taking all their insights from the sales presentation and overall sales process, and enhancing Marketing’s understanding of the customer. This is called closed loop marketing!
It seems so commonsensical when laid out holistically. The stats even speak for themselves, Marketing contribution to Sales is 212% higher when sales and marketing are aligned, reporting to the same CEO or COO (source: Marketo Sales & Marketing Alignment Study, 2013), rather than a divisional head or sales reporting to the Marketing Dept.
Closing the loop,
All of this is easier said than done, and it has a lot to do with culture and behaviour. You can’t just walk in tomorrow and say “okay team, we’re aligning for improved ROI”. So what is to be done?
Thankfully, it all starts at the tools, and the saying “if you build it, they will come” really applies here. Creating an effective CLM platform is as easy as implementing the right sales enablement tools. Behaviour will come with time if the processes are in place to enable them.
Sales enablement (SE) solutions close the gap in three ways:
1) Actionable Customer Centric Analytics
SE is overlaid with comprehensive sales analytics software that track and compute every interaction, shared file, and customer behaviour. Everything from leading indicators to content usage stats allow marketing to truly understand how the content is being used, which content is most effective, and where the content has maximum impact. Clearing the fog of war that marketing teams face between launching a campaign and waiting for results.
2) Maximized Content Effectiveness
Content management is the primary function of SE programs, but categorizing playbooks doesn’t close the gap in and of itself. SE facilitates the information flow back to Marketing in real time. The statistics above empower marketing to cut out poor performing content and redouble their efforts in creating content that the actual buyer was interested in.
It also ensures that marketing is better prepared for, and adapts to, the dreaded content cliff!
3) Multichannel excellence
The buyer is fragmented, and it should be assumed that they know everything, or at least have the means too. Multichannel SE isn’t just about jazzy sales rep software with mobile sales apps, it grants Marketing with the knowledge of their customer’s interactions, and where, and when.
Marketing can use this to tailor channel specific acquisition or retention communication content, enable automated digital sales, and attract better targeted leads.
What success have you had with marketing and sales alignment? Was it because of closed loop marketing? Or, are you struggling with this very initiative? Maybe we can help.
