Sales and Marketing have essentially behaved as autonomous functions, but in the last few years, there’s been increasing pressure for them to work together to accelerate revenue growth.
There continues to be a lot of discussion about organizational alignment being the solution. Some pundits have even suggested that Marketing have the same performance measure as Sales: sales quotas.
Still others are suggesting organizational integration of some kind, such as part or all of marketing being moved under the Sales function.
It’s unclear if any of these predictions are starting to take root at the C-level, but in any event, it’s still early enough for Marketing and Sales to shape their own future.
I’d like to suggest a more pragmatic future that both Marketing and Sales can embrace; A future that provides a win/win situation for marketing professionals, sales professionals, and most importantly, the customer. But first, let’s remind ourselves what triggered all this controversy in the first place.
The Recent Past – Sales Is In Control
Ten or fifteen years ago, the B2B buyer purchasing process was 100% offline. Sales were in control.
- Buyers would call the Sales department for a presentation at the beginning of the their purchasing process
- Buyers would issue an RFI (Request For Information) in the middle of their purchasing process
- Buyers would issue an RFQ (Request For Proposal) near the end of their process.
Sales is really great at the one-to-one communication skills needed to close a sale. Sales would follow their sales process: confirm that the potential lead aligned with the sales strategy and territory plan, understand where the buyer was in their process by applying BANT (budget, authority, need, timeline) criteria, start to understand the members of the buying team (i.e. decision makers, recommenders, influencers), and ultimately, decide with the help of management whether it was worth pursuing.
Marketing generated a few leads from trade shows and PR, but Sales complained that the leads were poor quality and most of those leads were ignored.
The Present – The Buyer Is In Control
Today, the buyer is in control; They complete 50-70% of their purchasing process online through self-education.
Sales hasn’t yet figured out a scalable online selling process that allows them to identify, interact, qualify, and influence the buyer during this stage of their purchasing process. Sales is becoming more reliant on Marketing-generated leads for new business growth.
Marketing is really great at one-to-many communication skills needed to create market awareness. They responded to the challenge by greatly enhancing the company’s online capabilities with Social marketing, Search Marketing, Email Marketing, Content Marketing, Marketing Automation, analytics, and more.
Marketing generated hundreds of leads from both traditional and digital sources, but Sales still complained that the leads were still poor quality.
Is Sales and Marketing Alignment The Solution?
When people talk about alignment, they talk about aligning the Marketing function and Sales function so that leads flow effortlessly from Marketing to Sales, from the Marketing Automation system via lead scoring algorithms to the Sales CRM system, from MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead) via SLA (Service Level Agreement) to SQL (Sales Qualified Lead). A lot of time and energy is being invested in this area.
However, it is difficult for Sales to clearly define a sales-ready lead. Marketing is essentially asking Sales to transform their in-person qualification process into an automated online qualification process. The marketing lead just doesn’t give Sales sufficient information to feel confident that downloading a piece of content and visiting two web pages constitutes a lead worth chasing.
It is equally difficult for Marketing to provide better lead qualification information. Sales is essentially asking Marketing to design multi-channel campaigns that will produce more granular lead qualification information, without understanding what lead qualification information is actually required, and without Sales committing to responsive follow-up and feedback .
Maybe we should be trying to align our internal marketing and sales processes to the new buyer purchasing process, rather than trying to align our outdated internal processes between functions.
If Marketing and Sales shared a common understanding of the buyer purchasing process, it would be easier to
- define content that would facilitate the buyer’s purchasing journey from one stage to the next,
- identify buyer behavior as they exited one stage of their purchasing process and entered the next stage
- design campaigns for the self-educating buyers to also self-qualify themselves as they became more informed.
Is Sales and Marketing Integration The Solution?
When people talk about integration, they talk about integrating marketing and sales people within the same group, presumably headed by either by a sales leader or a marketing leader. Again, this focuses our efforts internally, rather than externally on the customer.
Maybe we should be trying to create an integrated marketing and sales process to better facilitate the buyer journey.
Marketing has done a great job communicating to the buyer on the internet, on social media, and at a trade show booth. The challenge is to leverage that buyer access and help the buyer move through their purchasing process more quickly, influence their vendor preference along the way, and ultimately turn them into a loyal customer.
Sales and Marketing Teamwork
To use an analogy, for the past 20 years the marketing and sales functions have behaved like a relay team, always trying to figure out how to pass the baton (lead) between them without dropping it.
The buyer has changed and their purchasing journey will continue to evolve. For us to be successful going forward, we need to collaboratively figure out how to influence the buyer throughout their journey, whether it is online or offline, while delivering accelerated revenue to the corporation and a seamless customer experience. Becoming a better relay team probably won’t get us there.
Maybe the best analogy for our future is that Marketing and Sales should behave like a high performance basketball team comprised of players with different roles and different skills, but all following the same playbook. We pass the ball seamlessly back and forth between team members, from marketing players to sales players and back again, moving the ball and the prospect steadily down the court, until we score a loyal customer.
It all starts with Marketing and Sales collaborating on a common understanding of the buyer’s new purchasing process and figuring out how we can best facilitate their journey. The sooner we start to understand our buyer, the sooner we can start to shape our future.
Let’s shape the future together. Please share this with your colleagues.