By Erin Lynch-Klarup
The Sales and Marketing relationship at many B2B companies can be characterized by the term “managed dissatisfaction”. Competing goals and time horizons prevent the functions from seeing eye-to-eye, resulting in Marketing and Sales doing just enough to placate each other while pursuing separate agendas.
Marketing and Sales have traditionally seemed resigned to this, content to work around each other if they couldn’t work together. That’s changing. We’ve seen a dramatic rise in the attention marketers are paying to alignment with their sales counterparts. Three factors are driving this interest in improved coordination across the commercial organization:
#1: The Downturn
The economic downturn exposed existing problems within the commercial organization. Poor lead handoff or inconsistent messaging become more apparent in a recalcitrant buying environment. Additionally, spending and personnel cutbacks at many organizations make duplicated efforts across Sales and Marketing unsustainable.
#2: A Complex Purchase Funnel
Thanks to digital media, the purchase funnel is increasingly chaotic. Customers in many industries are likely to learn about suppliers from an online forum of peers rather than a sales rep. As suppliers cede control over their positioning, clear and consistent messaging—along with general coordination between Sales and Marketing—is critical.
#3: The Rise of Collaboration Technologies
Nearly all of the Fortune 1000 has some sort of CRM system in place, and we’re seeing increasing rates of adoption when it comes to collaboration, automation, and analytical technologies. The potential benefit is huge… but this makes the potential downfall of lagging behind competitors huge, too. In the midst of this technological arms race, marketers need to discern which alignment problems can be solved with technology—and which need to be solved first before technological innovations will pay off.
We’ll be spending the next few months going into greater depth about Sales and Marketing and we’d love to get your feedback and comments. Has Sales and Marketing alignment become more important at your organization? What is driving your interest on the topic?
MLC members, Register for our April 20th webinar to learn about early findings from our research on detecting Sales and Marketing breakdowns.
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on 8 April 10
Respond
Whilist sales is a function of marketing, there frequently exist conflicts in organisations where the two departments are operated parallel to each other. The sales department would want to be seen as the driver of sales while marketing looks at the success as its own. Sales me are ideally incharge of todays sales while marketers are salesmen for tomorrow. Conflicts are healthy but they should not be to the detriment of the smooth running a marketing oriented organisations. Ideally, there should be one head – The Marketing Manager and below him should be all other sales and marketing oriented departments.
on 9 April 10
Respond
Well, if one can observe this within company .”.. Competing goals and time horizons prevent the functions from seeing eye-to-eye, resulting in Marketing and Sales doing just enough to placate each other while pursuing separate agendas…. ”
) nor management of respective departments do not have a clarity in mind what is a main purpose of the particular department and how do they contribute to company common target.
then there is easy diagnosis that niehter Top manager (there should be one in the very end
The listed reasons to stop being unprofessional are good and solid “wake up calls” but sound as fighting simptom rather then rootcause.
To me there is no comptening goals between Sales & Marketing as they naturally complete each other (unless someone put conflicting goals with purpose), each department make its own part of the job to ensure company today & tommorow success.
on 13 April 10
Respond
I think a lot of it comes down to communication. We run into most of our marketing v. sales problems when communication has broken down. Communication and collaboration are key, then it’s about us focusing on helping Sales get the “at-bats” and Sales focusing on making sure they have the distribution trained, staffed and positioned to get on base. Sorry for the cheezy baseball metaphor.
Healthy tension is good. But each area needs to be in constant communication and some degree of alignment. We shouldn’t be helping to get them in front of people they can’t (or shouldn’t) sell and they need to know what we’re doing to sync up as appropriate.