What Does It Really Take To Align Sales And Marketing?
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Stephanie Chavez, CTSM is the President at Zen Media and a Cynopsis Top Women in Media honoree for 2019.
Several years ago, I was the head of marketing for a large product-based, sales-powered organization that created high-end trade show booths and activations for brands. As you might expect, our sales team was sizeable — 30 representatives who worked all across the country.
At a company that was so dependent on its sales team, you’d expect that sales would run the show. But the unusual thing about this company is that marketing and sales worked together on everything.
My team was included in every sales training, and we brought the sales team into our marketing meetings. This tight collaboration meant that our two teams could integrate our strategies and support each other’s efforts on everything — from email cadences to lead nurture campaigns to sales scripts, and more. Marketing was seen and valued as a true part of the sales team.
This led to a huge increase in sales overall. How? Because not only was my team better able to bring in inbound leads and speak to the pain points sales was hearing from customers, but we were also able to help our sales colleagues follow up and close deals with support from marketing campaigns and collateral.
The truth is that marketing and sales are two sides of the same coin. When they are truly in alignment, great things happen. So why isn’t this the norm? And how do we, as CMOs, help solve this problem?
Here are a few things CMOs can do to move our companies in the right direction.
Recognize the culture you’re operating in with regard to sales and marketing.
In my experience — and I’d be willing to bet yours, too — marketing and sales departments are rarely encouraged to closely collaborate. In the worst cases, they’re set up as rivals competing for leads and budget.
My guess is that this has to do with a few different factors. One is the pressure sales teams are under to perform in the short term as opposed to the more long-term pressure marketing teams typically deal with. Another is the difference in how the C-suite understands what marketers do versus what salespeople do. But whatever the cause, if this is the case at your organization, you need to step in and address it before any other change can happen.
Start by noticing how the marketing staff talks about the sales staff and vice versa. Is there animosity? Apathy? Ignorance of what the other department is doing day to day, month to month? Once you have a feel for the relationship between sales and marketing, you can begin the work of fostering true alignment.
Work from a place of similarities, not differences.
This is leadership advice for any number of situations, but here it’s especially apt. That’s because sales and marketing have been moving closer and closer to each other over time. Sales is conducting fewer cold calls and relying more on inbound and relationship-building. Marketing is being asked to collect more data on our efforts and to measure against additional KPIs with shorter time frames. (There are pros and cons to this, as I discuss in this article.)
What this means is that sales goals and marketing goals may already be more in sync than your staff realizes. Add to this the fact that both departments are relying hard on inbound strategies, and you have a place of similarity that can help generate some productive discussion.
Get face time (even if it’s virtual) with sales as much as possible.
As CMO, it’s your job to push for regular face time with the CSO and facilitate the same for your department staff.
Those successes my marketing team and I had at my former employer were only possible because we worked closely, in real time, with our sales colleagues.
Invite sales staff to your marketing meetings. Find ways for your team members to collaborate one on one with sales staff. Hold one-off meetings when you’re conceptualizing new campaigns or creating new messaging to get sales’ feedback on pain points and opportunities.
By simply being present with each other, the climate between sales and marketing teams will begin to warm up and make collaboration easier and more natural.
As important as these guidelines are, none of them will work if the CMO is unable to set a positive, collaborative tone with the sales team — whether due to a lack of support from the C-suite or from the sales department. But when those elements are available and the alignment is there, it’s incredible how much growth — sustainable growth — brands can achieve.
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