Sales and Marketing Unite! Really.
We're pleased to have a new guest blogger with this post. Ginger Conlon is editorial director of 1to1 Media. She blogs at Think Customer.
According to The Bloom Group, only 19 percent of sales and marketing executives describe their teams as “totally in sync.”
That’s unfortunate, because, ultimately, sales and marketing have the same goal: sell more stuff. Sure, they approach it differently. But when they work in tandem, magic happens.
That’s why I think sales and marketing should unite—one department with one leader. Perhaps that person has the title vice president of sales and marketing or vice president of business development or even chief customer officer. The goal is to have the people responsible for attracting prospects and engaging customers and the people responsible for converting that interest to sales working completely in sync. In most cases that takes more than interdepartmental collaboration.
The biggest challenge sales and marketing face today in terms of collaboration is alignment. (Dan McDade recently discussed this issue in his post, “Sales & Marketing Still Not Aligned? Who Owns the Fix?”) It’s easier to align one team than disparate teams. Consider how differently marketers would look at lead generation if their variable compensation hinged at least in part on sales results. Lead quality would certainly improve. Imagine how much more likely salespeople would be to use collateral if they’ve had a voice in crafting it.
Sure, this can happen if sales and marketing work independent of each other; it does in many companies today. I’m saying that it would work better if the two teams were joined. Think of all the sales and marketing professionals you know who incessantly complain about their marketing or sales counterparts: “They don’t understand what we need from them to succeed.”
Another challenge is communication. One, united team can more easily hold an ongoing conversation about, say, what constitutes an “A” lead (as this will evolve over time) or how many leads are actually workable or how best to nurture those leads over time than two disparate teams that communicate only when absolutely necessary.
What’s more, a cohesive team can better partner on the most essential part of the sales process: the ongoing customer relationship. You know, the one that leads to upselling, cross-selling, increases in wallet share.
Shared success metrics, common goals, ongoing communication, and real teamwork create a powerful bond that helps reach those goals. So, sales and marketing: Unite.