Starting at Strategy

Many companies don’t realize that marketing and sales can help drive the economy. In fact, the way organizations communicate value and reach out to the consumer can have a huge impact on the economic recovery. This is why the integration between marketing and sales is becoming an imperative for companies.

The role marketing plays within the company fosters their ability to become engaged with all levels of corporate strategy. Marketing must continually build bridges with product development, product marketing, sales, the CFO and the CEO.  Marketing’s alliances with different organizations within a company help build credibility. At a time when their initiatives are often revamped or even disregarded by sales, it’s important that marketing becomes involved at the ground level of the sales process and align their organization with corporate strategy.
 
Marketers have certainly felt the pain of wasted efforts. Still there are productive ways to recapture lost opportunities and work towards integrating sales and marketing activities. Creating high quality, relevant content is the value marketers bring; however, this can only be leveraged if efforts are closely aligned with sales objectives.

At a recent American Marketing Association Executive Summit, executives offered the following as a touchstone for integrating marketing and sales. Panelists included: Neil Rackham, Founder, Huthwaite Inc.; Alan Osetek, SVP eCRM, Carat Interactive; Michael Bosworth, Co-Founder and Co-Author, CustomerCentric Systems; Mary Beth McEuen, COO, Brand Alignment, Maritz, Inc.; Nancy Costopulos, Senior Director of Marketing and Sales, American Marketing Association.

You’d expect Sales and Marketing to be aligned in any successful organization—yet in fact the opposite is often true. The reality is that Sales and Marketing need to synch up or sink. The two need to be integrated in order to build customer relationships, enhance brand, capitalize on leads, improve market share and to boost revenue.

Taking the Lead

A logical place to start the integration process is to focus on the common touch point between marketing and sales — leads. All too often, marketing blames sales for not following up on the leads it generates, while sales accuses marketing of not pulling in the right leads.  How can the two organizations work together to gain a consensus on lead quality?

The dialogue can start by identifying who is charged with the definition of leads. Companies can encourage sales and marketing integration by forming a task force to agree upon a definition of a lead, lead prioritization, information to be captured, and when the hand off to sales should occur. In doing so, both organizations must recognize they have a common goal — to facilitate the buying process.

It’s important that the task force is not restricted to management level executives. It should also be composed of sales representatives who are prepared to work with marketing’s leads. Bringing salespeople into the definition phase not only ensures buy in, but it provides them the opportunity to become key stakeholders in the process.