More best practices for Marketing alignment with Sales: Easy.

Just today I came across two articles citing best practices for sales and marketing alignment. B2B marketers talk and write about this; so, I wondered if B2B sales professionals talk about this. My guess is NO. They are concerned with bringing in revenue. If they don't like the tools marketing provides, they just don't use them. B2B Marketers, on the other hand, need sales. We need to prove our worth over and over again. It's easy for Sales to prove their worth, just look at their revenue numbers. How does marketing prove their worth? One way is to make it easy for Sales.

They prove their worth by determining up-front, before a program is executed, how they will measure the leads and impact? Probably with sales help. I had a client tell me 'they (sales) are never going to get that information back to me". My answer: the easiest way to do this is to hire an intern and have that intern follow-up with sales on a regular basis. My experience has shown following up with marketing is typically not top-of-mind with sales. The intern/employee can do a quick recap with each sales person. Then those results go into a scorecard to be updated regularly. 

Even if a company has software like Salesforce, it's still the salesperson's responsibility to input results. A fact of life is if you want something from someone you should try to make it easy for them. So make it easy for Sales. They don't care about the results of a marketing campaign. They care about closing the sale. Marketing needs the results to prove the assist to sales. So, don't make a bunch of requirements. 

Next, align your program tactics with the sales cycle. Learn from sales about the barriers at each stage of the cycle then show them how you can assist in each stage. Create something relevant to the prospect and usable by sales. Think of your website content in terms of the sales cycle too. Can prospects easily access information relevant to their knowledge and experience with the company?

A few simple things to start off in the right direction. What do you think?
Jackie

Posted by Jackie Kuehl at 1/18/2011 3:23 PM
Categories: relevant marketing, marketing tips, marketing strategy and tactics, Marketing, Marketing strategies, B2B marketing
 

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