In this slide we define the terms we use and their application in the business
Essentially Alignment – working together according to best practices to achieve best possible results.
Misalignment
Drain on company resources
Losing time and momentum
Loss of profits in product delivery
More time needed for training
THE THESIS
Complexity is main problem in gaining traction between sales, marketing and the customer.
Misalignment exists because the relationship management process is complex and time consuming.
Loos of revenue and loss of time.
Sales and maketing are trying
Reasaon why
Lots of people
Complex prdouctds
Lots of moving parts
Vizlauise unknown complexity
sales and marketing don't have the same view of the customer
The customer doesn't always understand what they need until they see it
1. Sales 2. Marketing 3. Customer- how do you know with hundreds or thousands (understand all these perspective and how they different is near impossible)
Complexity problem - how to break it down and solve it
Getting insight into these previously not understood problems brings new insight
Misalignment is the secret revenue killer.
Performing poorly and misaligned -> with expertise and software addressing the problem
way to high level
example with customers where we saw misalignment
maybe there is something that this group is doing
re-educate people on the value of their
here is the diagnosis - vizualise what was previously unknow. Bring out the qualitative
Having the clarity of where the problmes resize - creating a roadmap: more training, understanding top performers
Now you have a map to address the complexity with clarity
A slide on score card - repetative benchmark
You constantly see thorugh complexity getting closer to customer and revenue
THE THESIS
Complexity is main problem in gaining traction between sales, marketing and the customer.
Misalignment exists because the relationship management process is complex and time consuming.
Loos of revenue and loss of time.
Sales and maketing are trying
Reasaon why
Lots of people
Complex prdouctds
Lots of moving parts
Vizlauise unknown complexity
sales and marketing don't have the same view of the customer
The customer doesn't always understand what they need until they see it
1. Sales 2. Marketing 3. Customer- how do you know with hundreds or thousands (understand all these perspective and how they different is near impossible)
Complexity problem - how to break it down and solve it
Getting insight into these previously not understood problems brings new insight
Misalignment is the secret revenue killer.
Performing poorly and misaligned -> with expertise and software addressing the problem
way to high level
example with customers where we saw misalignment
maybe there is something that this group is doing
re-educate people on the value of their
here is the diagnosis - vizualise what was previously unknow. Bring out the qualitative
Having the clarity of where the problmes resize - creating a roadmap: more training, understanding top performers
Now you have a map to address the complexity with clarity
A slide on score card - repetative benchmark
You constantly see thorugh complexity getting closer to customer and revenue
Stating the the problem –
sales and marketing don't interact in the same way with each other
research firms are discovering the same thing: if you get sales and marketing aligned, you’ll make a lot more money. If you don’t, you’ll fall behind or even go backward. So how are businesses responding? In most cases, not particularly well
This failure of perception carries over into the ways leads are handled
Showcasing our authority on the subject by pointing to the data and amount of research.
Break it down
9 lenses shows where misalignment shows in sales and marketing teams.
This was run on a Fortune 50 company with over 100 billions in annual revenue.
Our platform collects two types of active data: quantitative and qualitative. This Gap Analysis report gives an overview of all the quantitative data the platform collected. We look at the quantitative data here to find where the top areas of focus are, and then we look at the qualitative data to determine the root causes of the issues raised and the necessary actions to follow.
For this engagement, we covered a total of 14 Diagnostics, or Topic Areas, and we segmented participant responses according to Role, Region, and Tenure.
Score, Alignment, Top Challenge, Top Strength, Better Communication Needed, Better Training Needed, Volunteer to Help
A couple of top focus areas jump out clearly here.
Clarity of Leadership and Direction: Received the highest score, but has the lowest overall alignment, indicating again a wide variety of participant perceptions. We’ll focus in on this particular topic area a little later on. (better focus needed – “too many cooks”
Understanding Why Customers Buy: 2nd highest score, highest alignment, 2nd highest strength, indicating that participants are largely in agreement that they understand what the drivers for customers are. At the same time, almost a third voted that both communication and training around this area are lacking. We’ll look further into this as well down the line. (support issues, solution selling issues, messaging issues)
Competitive Rank: Received a score 10% below last engagement, received the largest number of strength, challenge, communication gap, and training gap votes. Clearly competitive rank is a topic on which participants have widely varied opinions. 41% noted a communication gap, so a lot of this can probably be straightened out with better communication. (same as last time – people believe in the product but need differentiation message)
Barriers to Sell: Lowest score and 2nd highest challenge indicate this is clearly a top focus area. (product vs. solution selling)
This was run on a Fortune 50 company with over 100 billions in annual revenue.
Our platform collects two types of active data: quantitative and qualitative. This Gap Analysis report gives an overview of all the quantitative data the platform collected. We look at the quantitative data here to find where the top areas of focus are, and then we look at the qualitative data to determine the root causes of the issues raised and the necessary actions to follow.
For this engagement, we covered a total of 14 Diagnostics, or Topic Areas, and we segmented participant responses according to Role, Region, and Tenure.
Score, Alignment, Top Challenge, Top Strength, Better Communication Needed, Better Training Needed, Volunteer to Help
A couple of top focus areas jump out clearly here.
Clarity of Leadership and Direction: Received the highest score, but has the lowest overall alignment, indicating again a wide variety of participant perceptions. We’ll focus in on this particular topic area a little later on. (better focus needed – “too many cooks”
Understanding Why Customers Buy: 2nd highest score, highest alignment, 2nd highest strength, indicating that participants are largely in agreement that they understand what the drivers for customers are. At the same time, almost a third voted that both communication and training around this area are lacking. We’ll look further into this as well down the line. (support issues, solution selling issues, messaging issues)
Competitive Rank: Received a score 10% below last engagement, received the largest number of strength, challenge, communication gap, and training gap votes. Clearly competitive rank is a topic on which participants have widely varied opinions. 41% noted a communication gap, so a lot of this can probably be straightened out with better communication. (same as last time – people believe in the product but need differentiation message)
Barriers to Sell: Lowest score and 2nd highest challenge indicate this is clearly a top focus area. (product vs. solution selling)
This slides shows that expertise on the software varies from one region to another with a difference of almost 30% between the MidAtlantic region and Northeast
Story:
Many areas of high misalignment – people disagree on key issues
Clear top focus areas – Barriers to Sell and Training
Clear areas of training – offering expertise and differentiation
Clear areas of communication – alignment (account management) and differentiation (product portfolio value)
Clear areas of strength – Understanding why Customers Buy and Timeliness (frequency of engaging a specialist)
Story:
In looking at alignment, we decided to see if there was any cross-section of the data that would shed some light on the issue. We found that segmenting the data according to participant tenure showed wide misalignment. Would any of you have any ideas as to why that would be?
Across the board, newer employees were less positive. The exception is those with 5+ year tenure, which were significantly more negative (nearly all comments said “no alignment at all”).
This next report is our Scorecard report, which does our benchmarking.
The scorecard here compares the current engagement with the engagement we did in July. For the July engagement, we queried a team of Storage Sales Reps, Storage Solutions Architects, and BURA Reps. For this engagement we added Software Sales Reps.
Overall, scores as a whole were a little lower than in the last engagement, but this engagement more or less reiterated and further confirmed a lot of what we saw from the last engagement. It also brought up some new focus areas, however, as we will see further down.
Again, a few top focus areas jump out here.
Training: Training was the lowest scoring area from last time, scoring at only 49%. For this engagement, the score jumped up by a full 10%.
Competitive Rank: Competitive Rank was a top focus area for the last engagement, and we can see here that it remains a focus area. It’s score decreased by 10%, challenge votes increased by 8%, and strength votes increased by 15%.
Collaboration: Collaboration was a top focus area from last time, and remains one. Score decreased by 12%, and strength votes decreased by 10%.
Team Alignment: Team Alignment was also an area of focus from last time, in the same bucket as Collaboration. Team Alignment received the top number of both strength and challenge votes last time, but for this engagement strength votes went down a full 22%, suggesting that teams are better aligned on this question (i.e. that it’s a solid challenge and not a strength).
Understanding Why Customers Buy: This diagnostic’s challenge votes increased by 14%, although its score actually went down. We’ll look at this diagnostic in more detail to determine what might have caused this.
Sales and markeing not having the shared understading of the custmer impacts performance.
Misperceptions is very hard to understand
more time spent on creating relationships and connections
more meaningful context for sales calls and follow-up emails
More time interacting with the right contacts