Research shows that cross-functionally aligned organizations have 19% faster revenue growth and 15% higher profitability. Yet many sales & marketing teams suffer a subtle, yet counterproductive, tug of wills when it comes to planning, executing programs and reporting on lead conversion. While there are many reasons sales & marketing teams fall out of alignment, the net result is slower growth and unnecessary tension.
There is good news. Breaking these five bad sales habits will set you on a path to more effective marketing outcomes and they are 100% in your control.
1. Stop hogging the credit.
I’ve been in countless meetings where marketing puts up a list of leads generated, only for sales to start picking away at the list. Sales says this lead actually came from cold calling, or points out that another was added to the database by a sourcing rep before the program ran. While it’s healthy to make sure lead data is accurate, it’s counter-productive to argue over who “found the lead.” If you want marketing to fund lead generation programs, they need to prove their budget is being invested wisely. Go ahead, give them credit, it doesn’t take anything away from your sales contributions and it may just help marketing fund your next big break.
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2. Drop the bouncer act.
Every time I speak at a conference about the importance of gaining buyer insights, marketers lament that their sales team “won’t let me talk to our prospects.” With a sincere desire to avoid disrupting an active sales process, too many salespeople protect their buyers from any contact with marketing. It’s a huge mistake. Buyers will tell marketers things they won’t tell a salesperson. And more importantly, how can you expect marketing to create highly engaging assets to bring prospects along the buyer’s journey if they don’t talk to buyers? Go ahead, step aside, make introductions and help marketing collect feedback. Encouraging marketers to have direct dialog is good for your sales efforts in the long run, and the risk of disrupting an active project in the short run are tiny when marketing is properly briefed.
3. Refocus your collateral requests.
I promise the answer to accelerating deals is NEVER more product collateral. If marketing is not careful, they can spend most of their time creating new collateral assets at the behest of sales. The trouble is – that time is often poorly spent. A lot of the requests are really a reflection of sales being a little lazy, rather than a gap in buyer needs. For example, instead of modifying a sales presentation, we ask marketing to create a new one. Don’t get me wrong, marketing needs feedback on the assets they produce, but it’s important that feedback is focused on what’s really critical to the buyer, not only to the needs of the seller.
4. Read more.
Any time I’m brought in to support a new marketing/sales initiative, one of the first questions I ask is about what’s working. I then do a full inventory of what’s been produced. 100% of the time most of the sales team has not read the majority of material marketing produced, and they often don’t even realize half of what exists. There’s no way for marketing to get better at producing valuable content if sales isn’t committed to using it. And you shouldn’t use anything you haven’t read! Get in there, read what’s available. Not only will you feel more prepared; but you’ll also match buyer requests to what’s available more efficiently and effectively.
5. Fill out database fields, all of them.
I get it, as a salesperson you are busy. Filling out fields in the database is the last thing you want to take up your day. When you lose a deal, who wants to spend time documenting why in the ‘lost reason’ account field? But you know what, marketing can’t add the right features to the product to increase win rate if no empirical data is available. Nor can marketing run a competitive swap out campaign if no one is tagged in the database as having a competitive product. Bottom line, administrative database work is not busy work. Marketing can’t segment the database to improve campaign conversion and accelerate the pipeline without sales filling in the blanks.
Holding your marketing team to a high standard is healthy, but it requires holding sales accountable not only for a quota, but for helping marketing succeed. Because let’s face it, sales is a whole lot easier when marketing is at its best. And who doesn’t want their job to get a little easier?
Speaking of working together, I’d be interested in gathering feedback on how well your organization executes on sales and marketing alignment. I’d appreciate it if you would complete my latest survey with QuotaFactory here. Once you’ve submitted your entry you will receive a copy of the report and be entered into a drawing to win an Amazon Echo!
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