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“BUSINESS INSIGHTS”
to
our Clients, Readers, and Friends
Last month Fosters Research released
their survey on how effective B2B companies are aligning the
sales and marketing functions. Their survey found that only
8% of the surveyed organizations believe that they have a
tightly integrated sales and marketing teams. Nearly
7 out of 10 evaluated
their performance as
average or worse.
The report titled
B2B Sales and
Marketing Alignment Starts with the Customer found the
top three reasons for failing to achieve alignment are:
Jeff Ernst, a principal analyst at
Forrester and the author of the report, said in an interview
that “The most surprising finding from the research was that
even at companies that believe they're doing a good job of
keeping sales and marketing in sync, the main focus appears
to be on holding meetings in which both sides participate.
You could still be misaligned but doing a lot of
communication around your misalignment,” he said.
What the parties need to do first, Ernst said, is come to agreement on the “ideal customer profile.” Next, they should come to an understanding of the customer's needs and identify the stakeholders in the buying process. Taken together, these steps provide a “buyer-led alignment framework” for future action.
He added: “Too often, marketing doesn't
have a deep enough understanding of the buyer's needs
because they don't have enough interaction with buyers
themselves.”
When respondents were given five
options for desired level of alignment, the most popular
most popular choice (56%) was “closely coordinated
activities across the entire revenue cycle.” A distant
second (35%) was “a single, integrated revenue-generation
engine.” The other three choices each generated response
rates of 5% or less.
Here’s what I’ve learned over the
years: The
only effective way of
aligning sales and marketing functions is to ensure that
both develop a common shared understanding of who their
most valuable prospects and customers are and how and why
they choose to buy.
· They have
developed detailed profiles’ on their ideal customers and
their key decision makers.
· They map their
customer’s/prospect’s buying process.
· They understand
the critical business issues their customers face.
· They insure that
their “core competencies” (what they are really good at)
address their customer’s/prospect’s critical issues.
· They understand
and monitor their customers/prospects industries to identify
significant issues and trends.
·
They
align marketing and sales initiatives around the customer
Sales and marketing alignment is
absolutely required for a competitive advantage and to build
revenue. Market
and Sales need to stop focusing on what makes them different
from each other and rather focus on how together
they can provide the best buying experience to your
customers. The alignment begins not with strategies, tasks
and activities, but rather with the philosophies and values
of the sales and marketing leaders and the person who is in
the position to hire both.
Copyright ©2018 by Ken Wilson All rights reserved.