Sales and Marketing Alignment: the Essentials

It’s a legendary conundrum: Sales and marketing cooperation is hampered by a lack of communication and agreement. Often the two teams are much like Mars and Venus, with different objectives and different styles – not to mention different ways of being judged by management, and different metrics.

The first step to fostering cooperation is for sales and marketing to agree to sit down and speak with each other. This could be a casual after-work beer; it doesn’t need to begin with a formal sit-down meeting. During these conversations, both parties should focus on a few specific areas.

Agree to agree

You both have to put the company goals and a commitment to cooperation ahead of turf squabbles and egos. Seriously. Shake hands and mean it.

Begin with the end in mind

What are the organization’s business goals? These could be market share, net new acquisitions, recurring revenue, reducing churn, customer lifetime value, or a host of other objectives. Whatever the case may be, sales and marketing need to agree on that focus, with a mutual understanding.

At some point you’ll want to get it all down on paper (a two-way service level agreement) but for now, you’re just talking. And since you’re all supposed to be skilled communicators, good at making your points and listening, do both. Remember what Mark Twain said: “If we were meant to talk more than listen, we would have two mouths and one ear.”

Start with an agreement on the target buyer

A failure to agree on the target buyer is one of the first, biggest breakdowns between sales and marketing. If you have different ideas about this, it will play out with marketing trying to attract one type of buyer while sales wants to sell to a different type of buyer. Which means if marketing succeeds, sales will reject those leads. Not a pretty picture, and not conducive to good conduct medals. Or closed sales.

Agree on a qualified lead definition

The lack of qualified lead definitions is another common barrier to sales and marketing alignment. A qualified lead definition is an agreement between the two parties as to the stages of qualification and when a lead is ready to be passed to sales.

The definitions should include demographic information (such as company size) and behavioral information (such as requesting a demo of your product). Once the definitions are created, both sides can agree on a lead hand-off process, which will define when and how marketing will pass a lead to the sales team. This should be in writing.

Create a culture of accountability

Accountability is critical to effective cooperation between sales and marketing. Use metrics to track whether both parties are meeting their commitments. For example, marketing will hold itself accountable to sales by signing up to deliver a minimum number of qualified leads within a certain amount of time, while sales will be accountable to marketing by guaranteeing they will follow up on a certain number of leads within a certain amount of time.

If you diagram the process, a simple model would look like this:

Here are the key points:

1. Marketing is responsible for moving leads to qualified leads.


2. During the lead handoff, qualified leads are transferred to sales to accept.


3. If sales confirms that the qualified lead fits the criteria, then the qualified lead becomes a sales-accepted lead. If sales doesn’t agree, the lead is recycled – back to marketing.


4. Leads deemed legitimate by sales ultimately become sales opportunities, and are pursued further. Those that come to drop out of the process are eventually recycled back to marketing.


5. Quantifiable metrics should accompany every step in the process. By looking at metrics, organizations can find the areas that need improvement and optimize the program.


6. Service level agreements (SLAs) are commitments made by stakeholders in the process to deliver specific results and hold everyone accountable for their portion of the process.


7. Communication and feedback should be institutionalized in the process by having both sides attend regular meet­ings. It’s also very valuable for marketing team members to sit with sales team members and observe sales calls.

Eager for more how-tos on sales and marketing cooperation? Visit the Act-On Center of Excellence for an array of education materials, including the Intro to Sales & Marketing Cooperation.

VISIT THE ACT-ON CENTER OF EXCELLENCE

Photograph of Roy Lichtenstein “Hello” taken by Roco, used under a Creative Commons 2.0 license.

Photograph of the Rt. Honourable Richard Bedford Bennett signing a commercial agreement with France, courtesy of the BiblioArchives, used under a Creative Commons 2.0 license.

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How to Use Social Media to Help Find a Job

Job-hunting can be brutal: Sending out resumes and not hearing anything back; answering online job listings and seeing that hundreds of other people are applying for the same gig.

How can you differentiate yourself? How can you use today’s latest technologies to help break from the pack and push ahead?

Social media tools can help.

This week I had the pleasure of speaking to a group of HAPPEN members about social media. HAPPEN is Canada’s largest network of professionals in transition. The workshop participants were eager to learn more about social media and how they could use such platforms as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Google+ to expand their in-person networking efforts.

Donna Papacosta speaking at HAPPEN, November 26, 2013.

In this first post of this series, I’m happy to share with you some of my tips for job seekers. We’re starting with this maxim: Tell everyone!

Tell everyone you know you’re looking.
Be sure everyone in your personal network knows you’re looking for a new opportunity. And I mean everyone: your neighbours, your relatives, the other hockey parents, and the guy at the UPS store.

You never know where you’ll find your next great job. Many years ago I landed a lucrative contract from someone I met at a picnic for my new-mothers group. That was the last place I would have expected to uncover a business opportunity!

Add to your in-person network by also telling your contacts on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and other social media platforms that you’re on the hunt for a job. You could add something like this to your Twitter bio, for example: “Experienced CFO seeking new opportunity in manufacturing sector in Ottawa area.”

Connect with people who can help; help them back.
Look at the list of contacts in your database and on LinkedIn. Who could help you? Don’t be shy about reaching out to them, but be sure to ask what you can do for THEM too. This is a two-way street.

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How to Embrace the Holidays if You’re a Humbug

The holiday season is often referred to as the most wonderful time of the year. If you do not celebrate the holidays, or are just not particularly fond of them, you are in the minority. Even if your reasoning for not observing holidays like Christmas, Hanukkah and Thanksgiving is sound, others who are filled with the spirits of the season may view you as a humbug.

As a business owner, sitting out the holiday season is simply not an option. Even if you work for someone else, not partaking in what everyone else considers “normal” can mean alienation and also some missed business and social opportunities. You do not have to feel like the only kid on the block without a Christmas tree though. With some smart planning, you can embrace the holidays in your own way – building your personal brand and likeability in the process. Here’s how to avoid the humbug label:

• Show your gratitude. You do not need a particular date on a calendar as an excuse to let people know that you appreciate them. If you own a business, send out a “thank you” card in print or digitally and time it with the holidays. Your card does not have to mention a specific holiday but the timing will lump it in with the other efforts of the season of thankfulness.


• Give back. Again, need knows no season but there are ample opportunities for outreach in the final three months of the year. Take advantage of this fact by volunteering, donating or otherwise aligning yourself with a cause that you DO feel right celebrating. In addition to helping other people and causes, association with a charity or non-profit can improve your own business reputation. Get your employees or colleagues to participate too and you can build some internal bridges while reaching outside your company.


• Market accordingly. Just because you may not be a part of the commercialism of the season does not mean it does not exist. The National Retail Federation reports that individuals will spend over $700 on gifts and holiday-related merchandise this year. Plan your own promotions and sales in conjunction with popular shopping holidays like Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday. You do not even have to be a traditional retailer to take advantage of these well-marketed dates. Other people will be looking for reasons to spend money so they may as well do it with you.

Above all, look for opportunities in the holiday season to further your own brand. If you don’t, your competitors will have an advantage. By participating in the best the holidays have to offer without being over-celebratory, your business identity will get a boost.

What branding opportunities during the holiday season do you never miss?

Image via Flickr on Creative Commons

Megan Totka is the Chief Editor for ChamberofCommerce.com . She specializes on the topic of small business tips and resources. ChamberofCommerce.com helps small businesses grow their business on the web and facilitates connectivity between local businesses and more than 7,000 Chambers of Commerce worldwide.

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The Secret Of Setting Effective Goals To Empower Your Life

Just about everyone has heard, and most people agree to some extent, that goal setting is a great way to get yourself where you want to go in life. If you feel you can’t seem to reach the life you know you were born to lead, then effective goals can be a great motivating force.

As you begin to set and achieve goals your self confidence will grow astronomically. But where do you start and what will make your goals worthwhile? This article will help you to start setting effective goals which will lead you where you want to go in life.

An excellent place to start when you’re considering the goals you want to pursue is taking some time to consider whether or not the goal that comes to mind is really your own goal.

It is easy to give credence to goals you feel you should make, even though these may not be the real things which motivate you. Well meaning parents, friends, family and employers might have ideas or even suggestions about goals you could pursue.

Only you will know what is truly important to you, and only that which is truly important to you will give you the motivation you will need if the going gets tough.

If you want your goals to be truly worthwhile, then focus on performance goals and not outcome oriented goals.

Performance goals ensure that the success or failure of your goal comes entirely from within you.

Outcome goals depend on factors outside of yourself over which you have no control. If you say you are going to do a particular thing, you can either do it or not. But if you focus on an outcome like “I will make a million dollars” then you have to depend on others to make your goal happen, in this case you have to depend on others giving you money for some reason.

Outcome goals are cheap because you can walk away saying it wasn’t your fault, but performance goals leave the responsibility with you. In the end you’ll cherish the completed goals you were fully responsible for much more than any other kind.

Goals can help you focus on your acquisition of knowledge. They can help you organize your time and resources to get what you want out of life. Take responsibility for your life by setting goals and watch how you begin to feel empowered. You can truly be the designer of your own life.

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The $12,000 Value of Process-Driven Content Marketing

There are two important things I need to tell you about process. By process I mean the series of actions needed to achieve a goal. Applied to content marketing, process refers to the succession of steps resulting in the efficient and effective ideation, creation, publication, distribution, and analysis of content and content campaigns.

A well-defined content marketing process differs depending on the organization. For example, some industries (such as financial services) have layers of approvals to go through before content can be published. Some align content assets to specific themes or target verticals. In our process, we define the call to action before before ever getting started.

So while the actual steps vary depending on the goals and needs of your company, establishing a process that maps out the steps from filtering through ideas to reporting on KPIs is critical for making content marketing actually work for your organization.

Here’s why:

1. When there’s process, there’s action.

As you can see from the graphic above (get the full infographic here) companies with a well-defined process for managing content development see an average website conversion rate that’s 55% higher than other companies (5.9% vs. 3.8%), and an average email click-through rate that’s 30% higher (4.5% versus 3.4%).

These numbers are powerful indicators that process-driven companies produce more effective content – significantly more effective. Their content drives valuable action. Whether moving from an anonymous visitor into a known contact, subscribing to a newsletter, or requesting a sales call, these buyers are choosing to engage with an organization and taking the next step toward purchase.

Speaking of engagement, it goes a step further when you look at the email click-thorough rate. Not only do companies with a process convert visitors more than twice as often, but their on-going email communications drive action 30% more often.

2. When there’s process, it costs less to acquire new customers.

If driving action didn’t get you excited, hopefully dollar signs will.

Content marketing leaders have a much more process-driven approach to content marketing than followers. As I discussed in an earlier article, leaders align content to buyer personas and the sales cycle, and track performance across channels. Combined, each of these best practices result in significantly lower acquisition costs. Take a look at the table below from Aberdeen Group’s report, Crossing the Chaos (you can download the whole report for free here):

For every new customer acquired, content marketing leaders save more than $12,000 compared to followers. One more time. That’s $12,000 saved for every new customer that’s acquired through marketing! Beyond action, process-driven content marketing leads to results at a much lower cost to the organization.

If you’re looking for a way to show the value of content marketing, that number can help you out.

Defining Your Process

Now that you understand the benefits of process, it’s time to define the process in your organization.

To help you out, grab the eBook, The Blueprint of a Modern Marketing Campaign. It walks you through the steps it takes to build out an effective content marketing operation.

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Interesting Infographics: Who Is Your B2B Buyer?

We know that understanding the behaviours of their prospects and buyers is important for a successful B2B lead generation play. But how well do you really know your B2B buyers?

Earlier this year, the Acquity Group released an infographic titled “Who Is Your B2B Buyer?” which is based on their 2013 State of B2B Procurement Study. I’m not sure if you viewed it already, but I thought this was worth sharing now; after all, B2B marketers must always remember to reflect on the profiles of their prospects and buyers. With that being said, consider the way the Acquity Group divides buyers into three groups:

Up-and-comers

Ages 18-35

According to the infographic, 89% of up-and-comers purchase corporate items online – in fact, they are 131% more likely to make corporate purchases on the web compared to those age 35+.

Up-and-comers spend a lengthy amount of time conducting web research. As stated in the Acquity Group study, it takes a few hours for up-and-comers to find the best prices before they settle on their final purchase. Amazon Supply seems to be the top choice for this group’s corporate purchases – 82% of up-and-comers are already accustomed to Amazon Supply and 63% have made a minimum of one Amazon Supply purchase.

Established buyers

Ages 36-45

Sixty-eight percent of established buyers reportedly buy their corporate goods online. Only 34% of established buyers said they previously considered the website of a B2B supplier – ultimately though, these established buyers ended up buying from another, more affordable supplier.

Unlike the up-and-comers, only 63% of established buyers are aware of Amazon Supply; meanwhile, 43% have made at least one purchase through Amazon Supply.

Seasoned execs

Ages 46-60+

In contrast to the established buyers and up-and-comers, the number of seasoned execs making online business purchases is inferior. Only 45% of seasoned execs between the ages of 46 and 60 buy corporate items on the web; for buyers over the age of 60, the number is lower at 29%.

When it comes to Amazon Supply, 12% of the ages 46-60 seasoned execs make regular purchases from the business and industry store; however, their counterparts over the age of 60 come in at a mere 11%.

Note: Keep these buyer trends in mind

1. Online purchases are much more common now.

Corporate buyers are confident in making major online purchases; currently, they’re comfortable with spending over $5,000 on the web. According to the infographic, 57% of corporate buyers have already made purchases via the web; meanwhile, 37% of corporate buyers plan on increasing their budgets to accommodate online purchases.

2. You must create a web experience that’s comparable to B2C.

Seventy-one percent of corporate buyers claim that if a supplier’s company had an easy-to-browse website, they would spend more money online. Another interesting number to note: 25% of corporate buyers have revealed that if their suppliers offered more services via efficient mobile-optimized websites, they would increase their chances of spending over $5,000 on a purchase.

For more details, view the full infographic below. Which category does your B2B buyer fall into?

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Should You Upload Your Videos Directly to Facebook or Link to YouTube?

As the 2^nd largest referral source for video, and with 150 million active mobile users, most marketers are using Facebook as a platform for their video content. Right now there are two main ways to upload your videos to Facebook; either directly or linking to YouTube or another leading video site like Vimeo. Here we’ll explore the pros and cons of both upload methods to help you decide which is better for your video marketing content.

Upload Speed

Facebook video has come a long way from its early days when your computer would crash as you tried to upload a video, but it still takes significantly longer to upload a video to Facebook than to YouTube. If time is of the essence or you are working from a computer with slow internet, then you might want to upload your video content to YouTube or Vimeo and then link to Facebook.

Length of video

Facebook allows videos of up to 20 minutes. YouTube videos can only be around 15 minutes long, however users who comply with You Tube’s community rules may be approved to upload videos up to 12 hours in length. If you’ve been approved by YouTube for longer videos then obviously this is a huge advantage to posting on YouTube and linking to Facebook. This is especially important for businesses looking to post longer video content such as recorded webinars, without having to split your content into several parts.

Sharability

Posting on Facebook has one huge advantage- being directly hooked up to the Like and Share buttons. If you post directly onto your Facebook page then each individual like on your uploaded video will also count as a like on your Facebook page, generating future eye-balls for all your uploaded content for that page. Likes on video content uploaded from YouTube or Vimeo will only go on each individual post, and not on the page itself.

Search Engine Accessibility

Although video content directly uploaded on Facebook does show up in Google search, posting it directly in YouTube increases your Google search rankings. Linking the YouTube posted video on Google Plus also ups your SEO rate, something you would have to do separately if you post it directly on Facebook. If SEO or Google+ authorship is important to you then you should probably post you video content on YouTube and then post the link on Google+ and Facebook.

How do you prefer to post your video content to Facebook? Have you found a difference in views and lead generation depending on whether you post directly to Facebook or link to video content on YouTube?

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