3.2 Sales and Marketing alignment
If you’ve never heard comments about Sales not understanding marketing then you haven’t worked in Marketing for long. Likewise, if you haven’t experienced dismissive views of Marketing’s real value from Sales people then you haven’t worked closely with many people in Sales. In a world of shades of grey, even Sales and Marketing teams that collaborate well still experience an occasional level of disconnect. A world seen but not quite understood. This tragedy of org charts is the responsibility of both parties and a product of a lack of common language on goals, objectives, strategy and tactics. Marketing is a Sales efficiency engine and yet too often these organisations have too little understanding of each other’s challenges, constraints and value to be able to see the common linkages between their worlds. Put another way, they lack an agreed strategy.
Marketing is far from a simple division of Sales that operates under a different name; Marketing employs sometimes radically different tactics to achieve its business objectives. Simplistically speaking, the Marketing operating model engages with a far larger universe of prospects and customers when compared to a typical sales team, and will usually do so with far fewer people in the team. A Sales team may be ten times the size of a marketing team, even though marketing must communicate to audiences that are ten or more times the size of the sales database. Marketing must engage this broader audience before an opportunity is identified, nurture them as they progress towards a purchase and help them evangelise their decision post-purchase. The operating model for Marketing has to be different from Sales. It is a model and function whose existence and purpose is built upon the principle of scale and how to realise value from this.
Sales teams have two advantages that many marketers overlook. Firstly, most complex sales involve a Sales team working directly with a customer over an extended duration. They meet, they inform, they share information and requirements and from this they gain a far better understanding of the customer’s world than most marketers have. And when they do this over many years with different customers they hone an understanding of how customers work, the pressures of their industry and how to position solutions to meet their needs. Secondly, experienced Sales teams have generally acquired their experience by performing long enough in their field to continue being employed. Put another way, if you persistently fail to meet your Sales targets, its worth updating your CV. This experience can be qualified by saying ‘they’ve learned what works and what doesn’t’ when it comes to selling to customers.
By comparison, many marketers have not had that same experience. Marketing KPIs may be more open to interpretation an even experienced marketers can struggle with some more ephemeral KPIs.
Effective teams always pull in the same direction. They may have diverse skills, experiences, specialities or outlooks, but they always align in the areas that it matters in. No tug-of-war team has ever won where half the squad is pulling against the rest of the team. “Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships,” said Michael Jordan. For high-performing teams this means starting from a common objective and with shared understanding of how it will be achieved.