Sales and Marketing Alignment: Collaborate or Die Trying
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Struggling to get your sales and marketing teams to work together? Are arguments of lead definition and hand offs causing you to lose deals? You're not alone. Get our top 9 recommendations for aligning your sales and marketing teams for efficient lead generation, prospect nurture, and revenue growth. Learn more at www.clarityqst.com
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Sales and Marketing Alignment: Collaborate or Die Trying
- 1. Sales & Marketing Alignment: Collaborate or Die Trying
- 2. Sales & Marketing Alignment: Collaborate or Die Trying Presented at HITMC 2016 by Brian Shilling, Christine Slocumb Clarity Quest Marketing @CQMarketing
- 3. 200% MORE REVENUE HubSpot What if one action could increase revenue by 200%?
- 4. 40% MORE DEALS HubSpot And help you close 40% more deals this year?
- 5. In 15 years in business, we’ve found one corrective action that can help you achieve these numbers.
- 6. SALES MARKETING Sales and Marketing Alignment
- 7. Companies with non-believer leaders are never going to achieve sales and marketing alignment.
- 8. “You’re a non-believer. Why should we waste time on Kabuki?”
- 9. >50% of companies are not aligned
- 10. Deloitte 52% of companies with a STRONG alignment strategy surpassed average market growth…
- 11. Deloitte …compared to only 20% without a collaboration strategy.
- 12. HubSpot 27% FASTER THREE-YEAR PROFIT GROWTH Organizations with good sales and marketing alignment achieve 27% faster 3- year profit growth.
- 13. HubSpot 36% HIGHER CUSTOMER RETENTION RATES And see 36% higher customer retention rates.
- 14. What they didn’t tell you about marketing automation is… 2016 Annuitas study
- 15. …it’s only meeting the goals of 2.8% of the companies that use it. 2016 Annuitas study
- 16. It takes a lot of coordination to track leads in health IT.
- 17. Tracking original lead sources without sales collaboration is a lot like this.
- 18. Both sides want to keep leads to themselves.
- 19. They will never get my leads. Both sides want to keep leads to themselves.
- 20. If you think alignment is hard among internal teams, just wait until you add in an external agency.
- 21. If you think alignment is hard among internal teams, just wait until you add in an external agency. Outsourcing magnifies the complexities around trust and remote coordination.
- 22. We’re Supposed to Trust These Guys?
- 23. SALES Direct Routine-oriented Of the moment MARKETING Creative Deal with constant change Long-term planners Personality Differences
- 24. Recommendations for Sales and Marketing Alignment
- 25. #1 - Definitions Are Your Friend
- 26. Only 45% of businesses have a company-wide definition of a sales-ready lead. HubSpot
- 27. Agree on Funnel & Conversion Definitions 1. Funnel Stages 2. Target Market Segments 3. Buyers’ Sales Process
- 28. #2 - Agree on a Single View of the Truth
- 29. #2 - Agree on a Single View of the Truth Allocadia Implement a shared sales and marketing dashboard with detailed lead, conversion, opportunity and revenue metrics.
- 30. #3 - Partner to Use Content Effectively
- 31. KnowledgeTree MARKETING 61% think sales content is used effectively SALES 28% think sales content is used effectively #3 - Partner to Use Content Effectively
- 32. It’s most effective when… TrapIt Blog
- 33. It’s most effective when… TrapIt Blog
- 34. It’s most effective when… TrapIt Blog
- 35. #4 - Use & Share Technology
- 36. #4 - Use & Share Technology 84% of best-in-class organizations empower marketing with access to their CRM 2015 Aberdeen Report
- 37. #5 - Appoint Sales AND Marketing Departmental Leaders
- 38. #6 - Engage Sales when Building Personas
- 39. #7 - Give Quotas to Sales AND Marketing
- 40. For some great advice on setting expectations for sales and marketing and defining your custom funnel, read Revenue Disruption by Marketo CEO Phil Fernandez.
- 41. #8 - Trust Your Agencies
- 42. #8 - Trust Your Agencies Have full trust and transparency with outside agencies for optimal results.
- 43. #9 - Bond
- 44. #9 - Bond Whatever you do, get out of the office and bond together.
- 45. #9 - Bond Informal team building outside of work gives new perspective and appreciation for each other as individuals.
- 46. Sales and Marketing Alignment Checklist Define shared metrics, processes, rules and objectives Agree on a single view of the truth and embrace quality data Partner together to deploy and use content effectively Use and share technology, but only after laying a solid foundation Appoint separate departmental leaders with equal power reporting to an objective CEO Engage sales when building personas Respect sales and marketing quotas for mutual accountability Trust outsource agencies Encourage sales and marketing team bonding
- 47. Reference Statistics Companies with good sales and marketing alignment generated 208% more revenue from marketing efforts. (HubSpot) When sales and marketing teams work together, companies see 36% higher customer retention, 38% higher sales win rates, and 27% faster three-year profit growth. (HubSpot) 52% of businesses with a strong sales and marketing alignment strategy surpassed average market growth, compared to only 20% without a collaboration strategy. (Deloitte) Only 2.8% of marketing automation users believe they are actually achieving their demand generation goals. (Annuitas) Only 45% of businesses have a company-wide definition of a sales-ready lead. (HubSpot) 61% of marketers think their sales tools and content are being used in the right way. But only 28% of salespeople agree. (KnowledgeTree) 84% of best-in-class organizations empower marketing with access to their CRM. (Aberdeen)
- 48. Clarity Quest Marketing Twitter: @CQMarketing ClarityQST.com 877-887-7611
Editor's Notes
- Our agency is so happy to be speaking here at our 3rd HITMC. For those of you Tweeting today, our Twitter handle is @CQMarketing and don’t forgot to use the event hashtag #HITMC.
- Our agency is so happy to be speaking here at our 3rd HITMC. For those of you Tweeting today, our Twitter handle is @CQMarketing and don’t forgot to use the event hashtag #HITMC.
- What if one action could increase revenue by over 200%? And what if that same action could help you close 40% more deals this year? In 15 years of running a marketing agency, we look for commonalities among companies that succeed in meeting growth goals and those that fail. And we’ve found one correction that can actually help you achieve these growth numbers.
- What if one action could increase revenue by over 200%? And what if that same action could help you close 40% more deals this year? In 15 years of running a marketing agency, we look for commonalities among companies that succeed in meeting growth goals and those that fail. And we’ve found one correction that can actually help you achieve these growth numbers.
- That corrective action is sales and marketing alignment.
- That corrective action is sales and marketing alignment.
- I was recently on a prospecting call with a midsized medical device company and an executive from the company actually said “I believe in big S for sales, and small M for marketing.” These are the folks Don Draper of Mad Men referred to as “nonbelievers”. That company is never going to have sales and marketing alignment until that nonbeliever leader is replaced. But there ARE plenty of companies outside of this extreme example with a strong C-level belief in the power of marketing that still fail.
- I was recently on a prospecting call with a midsized medical device company and an executive from the company actually said “I believe in big S for sales, and small M for marketing.” These are the folks Don Draper of Mad Men referred to as “nonbelievers”. That company is never going to have sales and marketing alignment until that nonbeliever leader is replaced. But there ARE plenty of companies outside of this extreme example with a strong C-level belief in the power of marketing that still fail.
- The fact is over half the companies we engage with have ZERO sales and marketing alignment. That’s 50% of companies missing an opportunity that can be fixed relatively easily and inexpensively. Compared to other programs you are hearing about at the conference this year, sales and marketing alignment is not glamorous, and honestly the concept has been around since way before I was born.
- 52% of businesses with a strong sales and marketing alignment strategy surpassed average market growth compared to only 20% without a collaboration strategy.
- 52% of businesses with a strong sales and marketing alignment strategy surpassed average market growth compared to only 20% without a collaboration strategy.
- Organizations with good sales and marketing alignment achieve 27% faster three-year profit growth and see 36% higher customer retention rates.
- Organizations with good sales and marketing alignment achieve 27% faster three-year profit growth and see 36% higher customer retention rates.
- Marketing automation is only meeting the goals of 2.8% of the companies that use it. I believe one of the reasons for this disconnect is that companies first integrate sales CRMs and then try to bolt on marketing automation processes instead of taking a holistic view of the entire funnel and how technologies can support it. We’re starting to see a trend toward holistic integration such as the acquisition of Pardot by SalesForce but for many companies the two systems are hooked together in ways that are not optimal or not connected at all. Some of the problem is process and some of it is the technology integration has not caught up to what’s actually needed.
- Marketing automation is only meeting the goals of 2.8% of the companies that use it. I believe one of the reasons for this disconnect is that companies first integrate sales CRMs and then try to bolt on marketing automation processes instead of taking a holistic view of the entire funnel and how technologies can support it. We’re starting to see a trend toward holistic integration such as the acquisition of Pardot by SalesForce but for many companies the two systems are hooked together in ways that are not optimal or not connected at all. Some of the problem is process and some of it is the technology integration has not caught up to what’s actually needed.
- As the manager in charge of online marketing at our agency, I have access to certain conversions that can be tracked digitally (such as complete e-commerce transactions or demo requests) but the vast majority of health IT companies don’t sell online and have very long sales cycles. It takes real discipline and cooperation to track a lead that came from SEO 12 months ago all the way through conversion and many companies don’t have standardized processes. A typical scenario is a salesperson leaves, and unless the sales transfer process goes smoothly, we lose the insight. In these situations, tracking the original lead source is like finding a needle in a very large haystack of data, emails and lost conversations.
- As the manager in charge of online marketing at our agency, I have access to certain conversions that can be tracked digitally (such as complete e-commerce transactions or demo requests) but the vast majority of health IT companies don’t sell online and have very long sales cycles. It takes real discipline and cooperation to track a lead that came from SEO 12 months ago all the way through conversion and many companies don’t have standardized processes. A typical scenario is a salesperson leaves, and unless the sales transfer process goes smoothly, we lose the insight. In these situations, tracking the original lead source is like finding a needle in a very large haystack of data, emails and lost conversations.
- Another issue is centered around trust. Departments want to keep leads to themselves. Let’s face it, unless your marketing processes around how leads are handled are rock solid, sales is going to see marketing as a black hole. There needs to be a way for sales to check on the status of every lead, say collected at a tradeshow, even if it’s only to see that lead went completely dead. And since most customers are not ready to buy for 9-12 months in this industry, marketing needs to get every name and every email in order to properly nurture leads that aren’t ready to purchase in the short-term.
- Another issue is centered around trust. Departments want to keep leads to themselves. Let’s face it, unless your marketing processes around how leads are handled are rock solid, sales is going to see marketing as a black hole. There needs to be a way for sales to check on the status of every lead, say collected at a tradeshow, even if it’s only to see that lead went completely dead. And since most customers are not ready to buy for 9-12 months in this industry, marketing needs to get every name and every email in order to properly nurture leads that aren’t ready to purchase in the short-term.
- If you think alignment is tough with internal teams, just imagine how difficult it is to manage if you use external marketing agencies. Outsourcing magnifies the complexities around trust and remote coordination.
- If you think alignment is tough with internal teams, just imagine how difficult it is to manage if you use external marketing agencies. Outsourcing magnifies the complexities around trust and remote coordination.
- If you think alignment is tough with internal teams, just imagine how difficult it is to manage if you use external marketing agencies. Outsourcing magnifies the complexities around trust and remote coordination.
- Unfortunately, these misalignment scenarios are all too common. Why? One reason is personalities. By the nature of their job responsibilities, the personalities of sales and marketing people are very different. These are generalizations, of course, but sales people tend to be direct, routine-oriented (selling is selling), and of the moment. We have to hurry up and wait…going through short spurts of crazy amounts of activity followed by slower periods. We have to be able to meet quotas and bring in the bucks. And marketing people tend to be more creative and more concerned with esoteric concepts such as brand. We are focused more on the long-term, and are really comfortable with constant changes…in technology, in trade show tactics, in PR strategy. Just look at how social media has changed the entire marketing landscape in the last 10 years. We have a constant hum of activity as our campaigns are planned out over months or even years. But in the end, sales and marketing have one common goal and that’s to grow the organization. So whether you’ve had marketing and sales alignment programs in place and need to evaluate their effectiveness or you’re starting from scratch, we’d like to share our proven recommendations for aligning sales and marketing.
- Recommendation #1: Definitions are your friend. Sales and marketing alignment begins with shared definitions. What is a contact? A sales qualified lead? An opportunity?
- Recommendation #1: Definitions are your friend. Sales and marketing alignment begins with shared definitions. What is a contact? A sales qualified lead? An opportunity?
- Would you believe only 45% of businesses have a company-wide definition of a sales-ready lead? That’s the case, according to a recent Hubspot survey.
- At a minimum make sure sales and marketing define funnel stages, target market segments and your buyers’ sales process. Also agree on how you are going to track and measure conversions from one funnel stage to the next. And revisit definitions annually to make sure they’re still relevant. This is an example funnel we developed for one of our clients. You can see that each stage is clearly defined and expected conversion rates are used to determine how many total touches we need at the top of the funnel to meet the specific revenue goal.
- Recommendation #2: Agree on a single view of the truth. Data is the great equalizer here. Sharing facts takes the emotions out of the blame game and holds people accountable. Embrace quality data that’s combined with intelligence and analysis from both sales and marketing. A shared sales and marketing dashboard is vital because it enables your organization to understand the velocity and shape of the sales pipeline and make real-time adjustments if you see opportunities or roadblocks. This particular funnel comes from our Allocadia marketing budgeting system that adds detailed lead, conversion, opportunity, and closed revenue metrics to the marketing and sales funnel to provide a holistic view to both sides.
- Recommendation #2: Agree on a single view of the truth. Data is the great equalizer here. Sharing facts takes the emotions out of the blame game and holds people accountable. Embrace quality data that’s combined with intelligence and analysis from both sales and marketing. A shared sales and marketing dashboard is vital because it enables your organization to understand the velocity and shape of the sales pipeline and make real-time adjustments if you see opportunities or roadblocks. This particular funnel comes from our Allocadia marketing budgeting system that adds detailed lead, conversion, opportunity, and closed revenue metrics to the marketing and sales funnel to provide a holistic view to both sides.
- Recommendation #3: Partner with the sales team on how to deploy and use content effectively. 61% of marketers think their sales tools and content are being used in the right way. But only 28% of salespeople agree. (KnowledgeTree)
- Recommendation #3: Partner with the sales team on how to deploy and use content effectively. 61% of marketers think their sales tools and content are being used in the right way. But only 28% of salespeople agree. (KnowledgeTree)
- As you can see in the diagram, it’s most effective when marketing understands how sales is using content. When sales understands how customers are using content. And finally, when marketing understands how customers are using content to close the loop. Credit: http://blog.trap.it/blog/why-your-sales-content-may-not-be-working
- As you can see in the diagram, it’s most effective when marketing understands how sales is using content. When sales understands how customers are using content. And finally, when marketing understands how customers are using content to close the loop. Credit: http://blog.trap.it/blog/why-your-sales-content-may-not-be-working
- As you can see in the diagram, it’s most effective when marketing understands how sales is using content. When sales understands how customers are using content. And finally, when marketing understands how customers are using content to close the loop. Credit: http://blog.trap.it/blog/why-your-sales-content-may-not-be-working
- Recommendation #4: Use and share technology, but only after doing the hard work already mentioned. I will let you in on a little secret: 84% of best-in-class organizations empower marketing with access to their CRM. Shocking, I know. Marketing automation capabilities such as lead generation, lead scoring, and nurturing are important drivers of marketing and sales alignment. Marketers – don’t let the sales department hide conversion metrics or lost deal data from you. And sales – request to see marketing program plans, spend, competitive analysis, and corrective actions. Transparency is key.
- Recommendation #4: Use and share technology, but only after doing the hard work already mentioned. I will let you in on a little secret: 84% of best-in-class organizations empower marketing with access to their CRM. Shocking, I know. Marketing automation capabilities such as lead generation, lead scoring, and nurturing are important drivers of marketing and sales alignment. Marketers – don’t let the sales department hide conversion metrics or lost deal data from you. And sales – request to see marketing program plans, spend, competitive analysis, and corrective actions. Transparency is key.
- Recommendation #5: OK it wouldn’t be a Clarity Quest presentation without a bit of controversy. We really like separate departmental leaders with equal power that both report to a CEO who strongly believes in the power of sales AND marketing. It’s more common to see both departments reporting to the same person, a VP Sales & Marketing for example, but this scenario only succeeds in rare cases and usually involves an exceptional leader that has held both sales and marketing roles. If that person is really good, she’s usually the CEO. I’ve met 2 VPs of Sales/Marketing over my 25 years in business that excelled in this role. More often, a dual marketing-sales leader has a bias towards sales OR marketing. Even if they try, they cannot be objective. Remember the guy with the “big S, small M syndrome”? As part of our services we perform competitive analysis of marketing programs and we can tell within minutes of looking at a company’s website if they have a Chief Marketing Officer. As an example, go look at Rackspace.com versus their competitors. You can immediately tell they have a CMO before you see the leadership page. If your company can only support one person, try to hire one that has equal belief in sales and marketing.
- Recommendation #6: Engage sales when building personas. Persona definition is critical to developing marketing messages that resonate with your target audience. Too often marketing defines personas in a silo and then they gather dust on a server. Salespeople have the most visibility and insights into how your customers and prospects think, behave, and respond to marketing and sales materials. When building personas, engage your sales team. They will be more than willing to talk about their experiences and share what’s working and what’s not. Don’t stop at persona development. Keep the communication open and run your messaging concepts and collateral by the sales team. They will make sure it resonates with your targets and should be excited to use the new materials. We have a client that’s developing a patient flow optimization solution and since that field and hospital IT leadership roles are evolving quickly, it was super important to bring in the sales team for persona development. It was really refreshing to work with a team in which the CTO, Director of Marketing and VP Sales were all involved with defining the personas and funnel stages from day one. We continue to have great alignment between sales, internal marketing and our agency on this account and it makes a world of difference. We just changed the tact of an email campaign based on input sales received on a series of prospecting calls.
- Recommendation #7: Give quotas to sales AND marketing. Sales quotas are a common measure of sales team success, and work well to motivate salespeople and keep the company geared towards financial growth. While conversion quotas alone work well for sales, marketing needs a different set of metrics. Holding marketing accountable for revenue conversions is indeed one required element, but we believe marketing needs additional success metrics as well. Giving marketing reasonable quotas and targets is very doable if you properly defined your sales funnel. Run the numbers to see how many marketing qualified leads you need to generate enough sales qualified leads, opportunities, and closed deals to support your revenue goals. Hold marketing accountable for generating the right number of marketing qualified leads, and hold sales accountable for converting those leads into customers. Well-defined sales and marketing quotas - and respect for each - will lead to mutual accountability.
- Take a look at Revenue Disruption by Marketo’s CEO Phil Fernandez if you haven’t read it. It has some great advice on how to set expectations for sales and marketing along with recommendations for defining your custom funnel.
- Recommendation #8: Unless you have full trust and transparency with outside agencies helping you with PR, lead generation or content, you’re not going to get optimal results. If you need exclusivity in a market sector or product category to feel completely comfortable, mention that from the outset of your sales engagement with agencies. Don’t be afraid to air your “dirty laundry” under non-disclosure. Believe me, every company has its dark sides and as agencies we’ve heard it all. If we know what’s truly going on and where the challenges lie, we can team with you to address them.
- Recommendation #8: Unless you have full trust and transparency with outside agencies helping you with PR, lead generation or content, you’re not going to get optimal results. If you need exclusivity in a market sector or product category to feel completely comfortable, mention that from the outset of your sales engagement with agencies. Don’t be afraid to air your “dirty laundry” under non-disclosure. Believe me, every company has its dark sides and as agencies we’ve heard it all. If we know what’s truly going on and where the challenges lie, we can team with you to address them.
- Recommendation #9: The fun one… BOND. Have beers, or coffee, or chocolate together. Do a March Madness bracket together. Informal team building outside of work gives new perspective and appreciation for each other as individuals. I love the sales and marketing interactions I often see at HIMSS because everyone on the team HAS to come together to make that show floor and dinner meetings a success. But this alignment has to happen more than once or twice per year. We have a client that invites the sales and marketing teams, including us as their agency, to baseball or hockey games before or after every event. Believe me, once you’ve had your butt frozen to a seat in Wrigley Field alongside a colleague you are bonded for life.
- Recommendation #9: The fun one… BOND. Have beers, or coffee, or chocolate together. Do a March Madness bracket together. Informal team building outside of work gives new perspective and appreciation for each other as individuals. I love the sales and marketing interactions I often see at HIMSS because everyone on the team HAS to come together to make that show floor and dinner meetings a success. But this alignment has to happen more than once or twice per year. We have a client that invites the sales and marketing teams, including us as their agency, to baseball or hockey games before or after every event. Believe me, once you’ve had your butt frozen to a seat in Wrigley Field alongside a colleague you are bonded for life.
- Recommendation #9: The fun one… BOND. Have beers, or coffee, or chocolate together. Do a March Madness bracket together. Informal team building outside of work gives new perspective and appreciation for each other as individuals. I love the sales and marketing interactions I often see at HIMSS because everyone on the team HAS to come together to make that show floor and dinner meetings a success. But this alignment has to happen more than once or twice per year. We have a client that invites the sales and marketing teams, including us as their agency, to baseball or hockey games before or after every event. Believe me, once you’ve had your butt frozen to a seat in Wrigley Field alongside a colleague you are bonded for life.
- Thank you. Please visit our Twitter feed at @CQMarketing and our blog at www.clarityqst.com.