Three Ways to Align Marketing and Sales in 2012

There has been a lot of talk (decades, really) about aligning Marketing and Sales. Like peanut butter and chocolate, separately, they get the job done. But put them together and you've produced a work of gastronomic genius that you can't imagine ever splitting up again.

Yet, most organizations are still trying to get the recipe right.

Is your company best-in-class when it comes to getting these two functions working together, and holding them accountable for their performance?

This question is the basis of a new benchmark report published by Aberdeen called Sales and Marketing Alignment: The New Power Couple. Here are three highlights to help you nail the alignment challenge this year.

1. Hold Your Marketing and Sales Messaging Accountable for Driving Revenue

Previously, Aberdeen has shown that best-in-class companies recognize that marketing and sales alignment is driven by effective customer conversations, so are significantly increasing their investment in training their marketers and salespeople to create and deliver great messaging. They realize that it's not only about where you show up… it's about what you say when you get there.

This year, Aberdeen found that best-in-class Marketers are being kept up at night by the same challenge as their Sales counterparts: increasing top-line revenue. Every investment in a new marketing program or sales enablement initiative is evaluated with the question: "Is this going to have real business impact?"

It's challenging enough to measure the impact of marketing campaigns. So how do you tie something as intangible as a change in your sales messaging to quantifiable results?

Philips Respironics proved it could be done. After realizing that a combative relationship between their Marketing and Sales organizations was dragging down their performance, they aligned both departments behind a new message (developed with the help of Corporate Visions), and then brought in the 3rd party measurement expert Beyond ROI to measure its impact on their business. The $7 million in net-new business and $2.5 million in up-sell revenue they found that had been significantly influenced by their initiative caught the attention of Aberdeen, who featured the story in their recent report.

Tying your new message to top-line revenue is possible. If you want to find out more about how your organization can replicate Philips' success, attend one of three upcoming live, regional 2-hour roundtables featuring Philips, Aberdeen and Beyond ROI.

2. Get Marketing and Sales Aligned around Common, Quantifiable Goals

In 2010, we surveyed Marketing and Sales leaders at our annual Marketing and Sales Alignment conference. We found that:

41% of organizations set Sales and Marketing goals in a cross-functional process with both departments involved.

Only 21% of those leaders said that those goals were well-socialized across the entire organization.

According to Aberdeen, best-in-class companies rally Sales and Marketing behind each other's goals.

This doesn't mean that your Marketers need to crash your company's annual sales kick-off (though at Corporate Visions, that's what we're doing as you read this). But they should be indoctrinated with the same sense of urgency salespeople have on hitting quarterly and annual numbers. And salespeople should be educated on the importance of following up on leads in a timely manner, and giving Marketing credit where it's due for their pipeline opportunities and won deals. Check out our recent post on developing a joint Marketing and Sales Service Level Agreement to build accountability in both departments.

3. Get Sales Involved in 'Voice of the Customer' Research



Aberdeen also found that 71% of best-in-class Marketing organizations involve Sales in obtaining voice-of-the-customer input.

One point you need to understand here is that getting 'voice of the customer' input should not involve torturing your customers with 20-question inquisitions to identify what challenges they know they're facing, and then tying your message back to those preexisting pains. Customers aren't necessarily going to feed you pains that are big enough to cause them to switch to a new solution. Corporate Visions takes a different approach that focuses instead on identifying and amplifying the immediacy and magnitude of problems they may not even realize they have in the first place. Teach them something they don't know!

While these message development efforts are often driven by Marketing, you need representatives from Sales in the room. After all, who knows better how well a new message will resonate with the market than the salespeople who talk to your customers every day?

Filed under: Sales and Marketing Alignment Tagged: Aberdeen, Measurement, ROI