Marketing & Sales Witnessing the Biggest Business Integration

MARKETING & SALES
WITNESSING THE BIGGEST BUSINESS INTEGRATION

Who determines the target customer?
Who controls the buying process?
Who rakes in revenue?
Yes, both Marketing & Sales. Neither can do it alone. Functioning in silo is not a
possibility in today’s connected world anyway. In any organisation, Marketing &
Sales are critical functions and the kind of relationship both share is pivotal to
the organisation’s success.
Sporting different focus areas, with Marketing being more concerned about
brand awareness and lead generation and Sales pursuing lead closures and
boosting conversion rates, the eventual goal is common – revenue maximization.
In this paper, we have attempted to understand the evolving ambit of Marketing
& Sales and whether it is their integration or collaboration that is the way
forward.
©Denave2018
FOREWORD
#DenaveInsights ©Denave

We are immensely thankful to all the marketing veterans for participating and
sharing their expert opinions on the various aspects of this topic. The views
shared are purely their personal opinions and is not reflective of the brand they
represent. This eBook would not be a reality without their support.
©Denave2018
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The Big Q!
Fact - As per research, misalignment between sales and marketing significantly
impacts revenue with lost sales and wasted marketing outlay costing companies
$1 trillion a year.1
Yet, this is not a common occurrence. Traditionally, Marketing and Sales have
occupied two different spaces in the entire gamut of business functions.
Marketing was positioned at the top of the sales funnel carrying the
responsibility of lead generation, and Sales was saddled with the lead
conversion. While Marketing did the market research, created brand awareness
and supplied both the leads and the content to Sales to help them attain
closures, Sales took the ownership of customer relationship and skilfully aimed
to convert the prospects into customers.
ALLIES OR
ADVERSARIES

Looking closely, each is dependent on the other. Sales depend on Marketing for
customer relevant content and leads while Marketing depends on Sales for
gathering on-ground insights, understanding the pain points of the customer
and generating further customer relevant content. Unless the knowledge of the
sales team is converted into the essence of the marketing content, optimal lead
conversion shall remain a fantasy.
ALLIES OR
ADVERSARIES

While it makes sense for the two to ally, the perfect integration is still far from
reality for most organisations. Even though 80% of businesses recognise the
benefits of greater alignment between sales and marketing, most (60%) aren’t
unifying their divisions.2
However, there are evident signs of evolution and changing mindset in the
industry. Marketing has progressed from a mass-approach to a personalized
approach. It is now putting in efforts into converting its campaign audience
into customers – as such, a sales team job. The sales team is channelizing
their energies into understanding the buyer better by looking into the
marketing campaigns in-depth – as such, a marketeer’s job.
WINDS OF CHANGE
The traditional B2B buyer decision journey where sales is
responsible for meeting, educating, and closing while
marketing is responsible for qualified lead generation is
dead. Buyers today are constantly jumping decision
stages and there is more democratization in purchase
today - this puts marketing focus on delivering sharper
awareness and consideration with both visible and
invisible stakeholders.
SRIRAM
GOPALASWAMY,
Head – Commercial
Marketing, Lenovo India
Today’s B2B buyers may not need the help of a
salesperson as they did a decade ago. Instead, they
rely on thought-leadership content, product reviews,
case studies and peer recommendations that
marketing teams develop to nurture prospects.
LLOYD MATHIAS,
Angel Investor & Former
APAC Marketing Head, HP Inc

Fitting into each other’s shoes and understanding the commonality of the
final goal is slowly putting things into perspective. Both the teams are now
beginning to implement ways to complement each other effectively. Also,
the realisation of the common good has fastened the pace for the
collaborative functioning. As such, the integration becomes a natural
progression.
The advent of digital era has brought forth new dynamics into the
relationship with the reins being firmly held by the new age customer. In
fact, technology has played a dual catalyst role here – a reason for causing
this paradigm shift, as well as an enabler for assisting the trend to pick up
motion.
The marketing function has been impacted a lot by digital,
e-commerce and data analytics in the last 5 years. The
traditional media while is still used to create mass
awareness and build brands but CRM & digital have
enabled targeting of individual customers rather than
targeting a large target of consumers. The real-time
responses, the widening of media has also led to
democratisation of the marketing function and more
decisions being made by middle and lower management.
UMMED SINGH,
Head – Marketing, ITC Limited, (Lifestyle Retail
Business Division)
The input for a successful sales or marketing function is
essentially the same – market information, customer
knowledge, pattern and trend mapping etc. With these
two existing as divided entities, it’s mainly a loss of time,
effort, money and opportunities. One revenue team is the
way to go – yes, they can work as sub-functions for the
expertise they provide – but they definitely need to roll up
under one.
SHUBHRA SINHA,
AVP – Marketing &
Digital Strategy, Denave
WINDS OF CHANGE

IS MARKETING
THE NEW SALES?
Both marketing and sales will need to function seamlessly for the business to
thrive. With the lines blurring and consumer expectations growing, the two
functions will need to be more agile and proactive instead of protecting their
turf.
LLOYD MATHIAS,
Angel Investor & Former APAC Marketing Head, HP Inc
I'd consider moving sales and marketing into single customer experience team.
While marketing is responsible for not just leading the customer into the mouth
of a funnel, but also manage the customer journey post-sales; the sales team is
responsible for the last-mile customer experience which is the most critical to
brand consideration.
SRIRAM GOPALASWAMY,
Head – Commercial Marketing, Lenovo India
Both functions need to be integrated better, but care needs to be taken to
ensure that all marketing initiatives are not focused on short term sales. Brand
building and consumer engagement initiatives should not be focused on
generating short-term sales.
UMMED SINGH,
Head – Marketing, ITC Limited (Lifestyle Retail Business Division)
The way sales is evolving from the days of cold customer outreach to becoming
targeted and consultative, and the way marketing now looks at ROI and SQL
(not just MQL), both seem to be responding to the friendship call. With the
emergence of the new-age buyer, it’s not about one being the other, but about
the two joining forces to become one rock-solid army – that forms the
backbone of a successful organisation.
SHUBHRA SINHA,
AVP – Marketing & Digital Strategy, Denave
Today’s customers in B2B or B2C environment have more power, more
information, and the ability to research and understand the product/services
offered. In such a scenario, marketing can play a very critical role and help the
organization adapt to the new market dynamics by working together with sales
as one integrated team.
MOHIT VERMA,
Senior Director – Marketing, GEP Worldwide

The factor to be considered before bringing in the integration is to ensure
that the inhibition towards complete integration doesn’t mar the requisite
overlap. For example, keeping something as basic as the software usage
non-integrated means sales team using their CRM and marketing team
leveraging their marketing automation platform but not sharing any data
with each other. Meaning, leads from marketing automation are not being
worked upon by sales and marketing team remaining devoid of any
intrinsic info on the customer/prospect which sales has gauged.
WEIGHING THE VERDICT
A complete integration of the process is always
beneficiary as the business can be planned, organized
and executed in cohesion right from the beginning. If
there is a mere collaboration, it still leaves gaps and
loop holes which result in lesser or delayed benefits. The
high point of this partnership is not only ability to plan
together, but also track, implement and convert the
opportunities by complementing continuously instead of
sporadic support.
NAMIT AGRAWAL,
Marketing Lead – Asia, HCL Technologies
There cannot be a complete integration as Sales
departments are typically oriented towards short-term
target setting, whereas Marketing needs to have an
orientation towards discipline, focus and consistency.
RUCHIN KHANDUJA,
Senior GM – Marketing, HSIL Ltd.

Integrating sales and marketing teams as equal partners makes most sense
today. Tighter integration of these two critical teams can benefit the enterprise
in many ways. When the teams are integrated, their goals are also aligned
whether it is brand awareness or lead generation, in a cohesive way, leading to
much better outcomes. Further, it can significantly improve customer
engagement, understanding of customer journey impacting the lead flow
considerably and enabling the enterprise to optimize its engagement program.
MOHIT VERMA,
Senior Director – Marketing, GEP Worldwide
To achieve the right alignment, it is imperative to identify and focus on areas
that gives scope of successful collaboration underlying their common goal of
successfully influencing the customer through its journey. Not to forget,
customer’s purchase pattern and decision-making parameters are continuously
evolving in today’s day and age. A study suggests that if both the functions work
in collaboration then many companies experience a 20% increase in their sales.3
Over the past years Marketing and sales function have evolved with the degree
and avenues of customer engagement deciding the pace of this evolution. The
prominent tools and technology of managing customer relationship – Analytics,
CRM, social listening etc are being jointly used and leveraged by both Marketing
and Sales. Certainly, they seem to be traversing the common grounds now.
In successful organisations the departments have never worked in silos. The
intensity of collaboration could have been lower due to limited availability
of tools to impact sales. The evolution is good for the functions, the brand
and the organisation. Integrated departments allow both functions to learn
more about the brand, the business and the consumers. This will let both
departments to fine tune their strategies and provide a better offering.
UMMED SINGH,
Head – Marketing, ITC Limited
(Lifestyle Retail Business Division)
WEIGHING THE VERDICT

Technology is continually advancing. In tandem, both the customer’s journey as
well as tools available to Marketing for message delivery also continue to evolve.
Sales bring in the much-needed personal touch to this entire process making it
more relational than transactional – a business strategy towards achieving new
sales closure and boosting customer retention. Both depend on each other
heavily to find solution to the perennial problem – ‘What does customer really
want?’.
It is at this juncture the ‘Revenue Team’ emerges forging the age of team work
rather than passing the baton. The members align and collaborate and when
required integrate thus blurring any remnants of contention between the two.
©Denave2018
RISE OF THE
REVENUE TEAM

Surely, poor integration between the two spells disaster for company’s balance
sheets besides leaving a trail of duplicated efforts and a bunch of confused
customers. Nearly half of marketing and sales professionals rate the main challenge
pertaining to their mutual alignment and eventual lead closures as communication
followed by broken or flawed processes (42%), use of different metrics (40%), lack
of accurate data on target accounts (39%) and reporting challenges (27%).4
The list of non-negotiables for making the task of integration easier is lengthy. It
starts right from goal’s alignment to merged KPIs. In the process, there needs to be
a common conversation platform as well as mutual accountability for it to be
successful. Needless to add, what makes or breaks this integration is the ecosystem.
Striving for establishing an environment where opinions, disagreements and
perspectives are valued, is the way to go.
©Denave2018
ATTAINING PERFECT
ALIGNMENT

It’s the art of mastering co-leverage that gets the teams closer to the
desired result.ATTAINING PERFECT
ALIGNMENT
A proper channel for bridging communication between the teams
and usage of common technology platforms such as CRM and
marketing automation tools to allow complete visibility to both the
groups into overall sales and marketing activities are important for
bridging the gap between these two. Another important step is
metrics alignment. Marketing should align some of its metrics with
sales such as form fills, marketing qualified leads, sales accepted
leads, and understand their impact on sales qualified leads.
Simultaneously, they need to help sales reps understand why
marketing metrics matter and how they can help make sales easier.
MOHIT VERMA,
Senior Director – Marketing,
GEP Worldwide
I think the fact that marketing measurement has moved
beyond measuring only communication effectiveness to
measuring leads and conversions aligns it better to business.
This has been a significant step along with the orientation to
digital - a medium that lends itself better to two-way
communication and real-time consumer feedback. Going
forward, the lead management processes must align closely
with the way the sales org handles outreach and tracks
prospects/customer insights. At the same time, Marketing
requires full visibility into the process – status, disposition of
leads, rejection of leads and so on.
LLOYD MATHIAS,
Angel Investor &
Former APAC Marketing Head, HP Inc

I think what will make this integration faster is the emergence of hybrid roles –
those who are made responsible to remove this divide. Another important step
would be to make the interaction as frequent, possibly on everything. The
opinion difference can exist, but there needs to be awareness on what the other
is doing. Then of course, multiple things like clear role mapping, expectation
setting, KPI setting, evolution in existing roles etc. are all add-ons. Automation is
going to be the driver of this change – whether it’s intelligent CRM or advanced
marketing automation tools – they are all critical to achieve this desired
integration.
SHUBHRA SINHA,
AVP – Marketing & Digital Strategy, Denave
The goals for every campaign should be clearly laid out and there should be a
pragmatic approach – the deliverables of a branding or CSR campaign would
be very different from a product/ service specific lead gen one. All the
campaigns should carry a qualitative component with associated
responsibilities instead of just dwelling upon numbers.
NAMIT AGRAWAL,

MarTech comprises of multiple tech-tool applications under the umbrella of digital
asset management, analytics tools, lead management, CRM, content management
system, social media management and marketing automation. There is a visible
shift towards increased application of data analytics and predictive intelligence for
charting customer journey. With the advancements in the fields of AI and ML and
their integration into sales tools there is an added impetus to the entire sales
process. No wonder then investment in these smart software for marketing activities
is on an upward trajectory and has triggered the genesis of MarTech era.
As per a research, Enterprise marketeers are spending 22% of their budget on
MarTech plans.5 The shift can be attributed to the rise of decision sciences. Today,
any decision-making which earlier used to depend a lot on past patterns, gut
instincts or traditional market surveys, has now become an informed act depending
upon big data analytics and other business intelligence tools.
©Denave2018
ADVENT OF THE
MARTECH ERA

Brands have more data about consumers than ever before. They are collecting
it from a growing number of digital channels – including social and mobile
applications. And not only are brands collecting channel data, they are also
starting to collect network and device data. Collecting data streams allows
brands to understand how consumers are interacting with networks and devices
that they can combine with traditional consumer data - demographic, and
sociographic to improve marketing efforts. The concept of a customer data hub
– a place to store all different types of data – whether it’s primary data from
leads/sales, secondary data from partners, third-party data, or indirect data
about a customer from elsewhere in the organization– helps brands understand
that customer experience makes the sale, not just product or price.
LLOYD MATHIAS,
Angel Investor & Former APAC Marketing Head, HP Inc
The phenomenon of integration of sales and marketing has made MarTech, more
encompassing and comprehensive. Now, peeking into the customer journey,
right from noticing the product/service to developing an interest to engaging
and then eventually buying or discarding the deal has become an insightful affair.
With MarTech gaining momentum, quite naturally, the whole dynamics of
customer acquisition has undergone a major revamp. Even the marketeer’s role
has evolved in a big way and they are now extensively leveraging the
advancements in strategizing and executing their campaigns. In the process, the
whole function and process has become much more cost-effective, informed,
shorter and impactful.
ADVENT OF THE
MARTECH ERA
MarTech Platforms are a plenty today. What is however underlying these
platforms is a layer of customer data and meta-data that must be worked on, at
a constant basis and be available with a certain degree of accuracy. Setting up a
process of building and enriching data is very critical for us and we spent the last
couple of years in trying to set that up. Now it is showing us results when we apply
our MarTech on top of our data layer, with good outcomes.
SRIRAM GOPALASWAMY,

We asked the experts if they foresee an increase in MarTech spends
in their respective organisations in the coming years. And here’s
what they had to say.
WILL THE SPEND
INCREASE?
MarTech investments will increase in all consumer organisation
especially those which service the consumers directly. The
investments will be at multiple levels – front end to not only provide
better & personalised experiences but also collect better customer
data; at back end to mine consumer insights and devise campaigns.
Digital, social, e-commerce, omni-channel etc will also require
higher investment in technology.
UMMED SINGH,
Head – Marketing, ITC Limited
(Lifestyle Retail Business Division)
Yes, we do see and increase as technology evolutions offers
different kinds of possibilities for brand building as well as
revenue generation. Digital and advertising are going to
continue to rule for the years to come.
RUCHIN KHANDUJA,
Senior GM – Marketing, HSIL Ltd.

We spent the last couple of years in trying to set that up the process
of building and enriching data which is crucial for MarTech
platforms. Now it is showing us results when we apply our MarTech
on top of our data layer, with good outcomes. I forsee an increase in
MarTech spends by close to 20% year-on-year as we start engaging
with higher level tech to read the customer decision journeys.
SRIRAM GOPALASWAMY,
I foresee an increase in the MarTech budget spend over the
next five years, as the technology will help drive the
campaigns – right from selecting to execution to feedback
and creating continued traction with the target audience.
NAMIT AGRAWAL,
We asked the experts if they foresee an increase in MarTech spends
in their respective organisations in the coming years. And here’s
what they had to say.
WILL THE SPEND
INCREASE?

With the integration of technology into the cocktail of the dynamic duo of sales
and marketing, i.e. the birth of the revenue team – a team with one voice and one
goal, how far have we reached exactly? Despite being a reality, the scale of growth
of this trend can still be seen as a mix of hype and fact.
Multiple organisations still believe it’s a far-flung concept and too ideal for the
actual landscape but more than umpteen success stories from brands across the
world have proven the belief to be a self-pushing fad. Technology will continue to
play the role of closely aligning Marketing and Sales function rendering effortless
flow of leads from Marketing to Sales. A study reported failure to align sales and
marketing teams around the right processes and technologies costs B2B
companies 10% or more of revenue per year ($100 million for a billion-dollar
company).6 Further, lack of alignment leads to the waste of 60-70% of B2B content
and a failure to convert 79% of marketing leads into sales.1
©Denave2018
FINAL WORDS

Change management is tough for any company to plan and span out, however
mandatory it may be. But, something being tough cannot be translated into
something being impossible at the end of the day. And that’s the reason, it is apt to
say, the trend is here to stay and can be expected to amplify and broaden its reach –
all for one simple reason, it makes the organisation meet and exceed its eventual
goal – fulfilment of RoIs and enhancement of revenues.
©Denave2018
FINAL WORDS

A complete integration may seem unattainable however therein lies the future. A
trusted sales enablement partner can help ease the burden and facilitate a seamless
journey towards this integrated future.
An expert sales enablement partner enhances the productivity of sales and
marketing teams, eliminates the bottle necks, plugs the existent gaps, accelerates
the sales cycle and powers the whole revenue engine. Let a perfect partner to assist
you in this trek of ‘One Team – One Vision’.
©Denave2018
AN ENABLING EXPERT

1. https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/the-insider/24-08-16-5-simple-ways-to-achieve-marketing-sales-alignment
2. https://www.luminate.digital/blog/sales-and-marketing-strategies-and-how-they-can-work-together
3. https://www.impactbnd.com/blog/integrated-sales-and-marketing-5-reasons-why-integration-is-valuable
4. https://www.demandgenreport.com/features/industry-insights/study-communication-is-greatest-challenge-for-sales-and-marketing-alignment
5. https://chiefmartec.com/2017/11/enterprise-marketers-spending-22-budget-martech/
6. https://marketeer.kapost.com/sales-marketing-alignment-stats/
SOURCES

For more sales insights, visit
www.denave.com/resources

Marketing & Sales Witnessing the Biggest Business Integration

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