This article was first published May 30, 2008 on the Tatum Marketing blog
You may think the subject of this post – the importance of aligning sales and marketing teams – is pretty obvious. After all, marketing and sales are vital parts of the same process. Cooperation should be automatic.
Surprisingly, this isn’t the case in most business technology companies. Instead, sales and marketing are two siloed functions, with differing outlooks and generally employing two very different types of people that are often at odds with each other.
And this leads to a major disconnect that makes both marketing and sales efforts far less effective – which can cost you boatloads of money.
Marketing and sales disconnects hit your bottom line in several wasteful ways. The worst, in my opinion, is burned leads. There is agreement among a variety of sources that sales teams in general fail to follow up on 80% of the leads provided to them by marketing. 80%! Imagine what that does to your conversion rate.
You can eliminate or avoid that problem right now by sitting your sales and marketing people down together and coming up with a single, agreed upon definition of a sales-ready lead. That means identifying the qualities a lead must possess before marketing passes it on to sales. Make a check list that marketing follows and get a commitment from the sales team that they will follow up on every lead that passes the test.
But burned leads aren’t the only bad effects of a marketing and sales disconnection. Marketing people today are often pretty far removed from actual customer interaction. Sales people are a valuable source of understanding buyers’ issues – which is critical for creating effective marketing programs. So why don’t they talk more?
If yours is an ecommerce firm without a sales force – and you’re still reading – there’s a message for you here too. Business technology purchases are complex – with or without a sales team. Buyers have a jillion questions that you (or your website) must address. Your marketing people alone are not the best source of understanding those questions. Call on your customer service, technical support and any other customer-facing groups for input.
This article is the last in a series of posts about the fundamentals of technology marketing. Some might argue that I haven’t covered ALL of the fundamentals of marketing, and they’re probably right. But I assure you that if you follow all five of my fundamentals, you’ll go a long way toward beating the pants off your competition.
If you have other “fundamentals” you consider necessary, share them with us in the comments box.
If you missed the other four in the series, you can read about them here:
#1: Create Sales Opportunities
#2: Marketing is a Process
#3: Mine the Gold in The Middle of the Funnel
#4: Make Marketing Accountable
Technorati Tags: technology marketing, sales and marketing alignment, leads, buying process
You may think the subject of this post – the importance of aligning sales and marketing teams – is pretty obvious. After all, marketing and sales are vital parts of the same process. Cooperation should be automatic.
Surprisingly, this isn’t the case in most business technology companies. Instead, sales and marketing are two siloed functions, with differing outlooks and generally employing two very different types of people that are often at odds with each other.
And this leads to a major disconnect that makes both marketing and sales efforts far less effective – which can cost you boatloads of money.
Marketing and sales disconnects hit your bottom line in several wasteful ways. The worst, in my opinion, is burned leads. There is agreement among a variety of sources that sales teams in general fail to follow up on 80% of the leads provided to them by marketing. 80%! Imagine what that does to your conversion rate.
You can eliminate or avoid that problem right now by sitting your sales and marketing people down together and coming up with a single, agreed upon definition of a sales-ready lead. That means identifying the qualities a lead must possess before marketing passes it on to sales. Make a check list that marketing follows and get a commitment from the sales team that they will follow up on every lead that passes the test.
But burned leads aren’t the only bad effects of a marketing and sales disconnection. Marketing people today are often pretty far removed from actual customer interaction. Sales people are a valuable source of understanding buyers’ issues – which is critical for creating effective marketing programs. So why don’t they talk more?
If yours is an ecommerce firm without a sales force – and you’re still reading – there’s a message for you here too. Business technology purchases are complex – with or without a sales team. Buyers have a jillion questions that you (or your website) must address. Your marketing people alone are not the best source of understanding those questions. Call on your customer service, technical support and any other customer-facing groups for input.
This article is the last in a series of posts about the fundamentals of technology marketing. Some might argue that I haven’t covered ALL of the fundamentals of marketing, and they’re probably right. But I assure you that if you follow all five of my fundamentals, you’ll go a long way toward beating the pants off your competition.
If you have other “fundamentals” you consider necessary, share them with us in the comments box.
If you missed the other four in the series, you can read about them here:
#1: Create Sales Opportunities
#2: Marketing is a Process
#3: Mine the Gold in The Middle of the Funnel
#4: Make Marketing Accountable
Tue, Nov 3, 2009
Strategy, Traffic
Written by: Susan Tatum