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There are dozens of webinars, seminars, research reports, whitepapers, and blog postings on the topic of sales and marketing alignment. Despite the endless flow of resources and suggestions, sales and marketing alignment continues to elude many organizations. Misalignment is often a byproduct of a lack of process and a natural result of traditional marketing and sales roles. Think about it -- sales is perhaps one of the most measured functions in an organization. In sales, performance is measured by tangible results.
Hi all,
Insightful as always Ian. Perhaps I can add a couple more? 9. Have marketing directors review their lead funnel in the weekly sales meeting. This will make them accountable for results, and demonstrate to Sales that marketing are willing to step up. 10. Measure and report on how fast sales picks up on leads passed to them by marketing. Sadly many hot leads can be flushed along with the many "fish bowl" leads passed over by marketing but as marketing organizations adopt marketing automation and score leads, lead quality should improve. Then it becomes important to ensure that Sales is following up in a timely way as many leads can have the shelf life of dairy products!
Best regards, Kevin Joyce
CMO, Market2Lead, www.market2lead.com
Insightful as always Ian. Perhaps I can add a couple more? 9. Have marketing directors review their lead funnel in the weekly sales meeting. This will make them accountable for results, and demonstrate to Sales that marketing are willing to step up. 10. Measure and report on how fast sales picks up on leads passed to them by marketing. Sadly many hot leads can be flushed along with the many "fish bowl" leads passed over by marketing but as marketing organizations adopt marketing automation and score leads, lead quality should improve. Then it becomes important to ensure that Sales is following up in a timely way as many leads can have the shelf life of dairy products!
Best regards, Kevin Joyce
CMO, Market2Lead, www.market2lead.com
Re: 8 Steps to Getting Sales and Marketing to Play Nice
Posted by: Kristin_Hambelton 2009-07-02 12:48:04 In reply to: Ian Michiels
Excellent article Ian, clearly there’s still a lot of work that needs to be done to better align sales and marketing to improve lead management effectiveness – including coming to a common understanding on determining criteria for lead qualification. Alignment here helps organizations better understand which leads should move through the qualification process (and eventually into the sales pipeline), and determine early cost-per-qualified lead calculations. Based on conversations we’re having with prospects, measurement of lead management effectiveness – including calculating defensible cost-per-qualified lead and campaign ROI - continues to be a significant problem, despite available technologies. Most measurement today remains a manual, time intensive process that can deliver questionable results. We believe we are on the verge of seeing massive improvements to those manual techniques, where adoption of more automated solutions can help marketers protect budgets and dramatically improve marketing effectiveness.
Kristin Hambelton, Neolane
Kristin Hambelton, Neolane
