Many companies still grapple with the issue of sales and marketing alignment, or misalignment. Traditionally, it’s been very difficult for marketing and sales organizations to align. Marketing often complain that sales doesn’t follow-up on leads, while sales say that they do follow up, but those leads are no good – they are not sales-ready. So while marketing often assumes that sales needs more leads, sales reps actually don’t need “more leads” – they need “better leads.”
When marketing and sales don’t work together to identify leads, to define what is a sales-ready lead and to follow up with those leads with an agreed-upon sales-ready messaging, the result is a sales-marketing disconnect, which greatly reduces sales effectiveness and hurts organizations’ bottom line by reducing sales.
Sales and marketing misalignment hurts organizations because it means that the marketing organization generates leads that the sales force can’t use, and marketing messages that don’t sell. Sales people, on the other hand, approach leads with generic messages, or with their own messages that are disconnected from the company’s message as defined by marketing.
One of the best ways to increase sales effectiveness is to align sales and marketing by having both organizations involved in determining and identifying lead readiness so that sales can focus on sales-ready prospects, and contact those prospects with effective, sales-ready messaging.
The right marketing automation tool can make a big difference in sales and marketing alignment. Marketing automation solutions provide sales with better leads because they provide tools such as lead scoring and lead nurturing, which enable sales to focus on sales-ready prospects while the marketing organization keeps in touch with leads that are not yet sales-ready.
Marketing automation solutions also encourage sales and marketing to work together, defining the criteria for lead scoring, and creating sales messaging that comes from sales but is in line with marketing’s general messaging.
April 9th, 2010 at 2:44 pm
I saw your question and commented on it before I read your post. After reading your post I realized I stated a lot of what you had already said. Hopefully my comment will solidify what you already posted.
Great question. It’s very tough to make understandable the very confusing world of marketing automation.
Thanks again.
Anthony
April 11th, 2010 at 11:00 am
No worries Anthony – loved the way you compared Marketing/ Sales relationship to a personal relationship and your statement that marketing automation tools simply allow better communication.
June 23rd, 2010 at 5:59 am
[...] pain points, and it’s up to each organization to decide how to solve these issues. Certainly, sales and marketing alignment is a key to solving them. Sales reps should be able to leverage internal resources such as [...]