Help Sales Understand Marketing

In the recently (December 2012) Aberdeeen Report "Sales Performance Management 2012" , author Peter Ostrow has two recommendations to improve your sales performance.

Why bother?

Improved Sales Performance leads to more of your reps making quota, shorter sales cycles and bigger average deals. Sounds good to me.

Ostrow's first recommendation is to base sales compensation on team activities , the second is to

"Cross train sellers into other customer facing roles such as Marketing"

So what are your plans to help sales better understand Marketing?

My suggestion would be continue your work on jointly agreements on Culture, Language and People.

How about running more joint meetings, now if you need an external speaker why not ask....

Is your Marketing killing your Revenue?

You've read how the new buyers journey is impacting on their decision making process.

Often suspects will research and validate what they need to know before approaching potential suppliers. Before approaching you!

Marketing's response to this new paradigm is content, more content, lots of content. A never ending avalanche of content.

And, you hold off giving that lead to sales and feed that baby more content.

The problem is your content is probably no better and just the same as your competitors.

Your webinars, white papers, seminars look the same.

Too much content will deluge your prospects.

Marketing think better content makes the difference,

Revenue focussed sales people know that better conversations make the difference.

Let your sales team off the leash.

Give them information to have better conversations, not more content.

Marketing Directors: Do you have access to the Sales Forecast?

Can you tell me how the company revenue targets are doing YTD?

How many of the sales guys made quota last month?

How many will make their numbers this quarter?

Do you know these numbers? Do you have access?

In their Latest July 2011 Report on Sales Forecasting, Aberdeen Group state that 89% of Best In Class Companies share the sales forecast across the company. Less than 6 out of 10 of Laggard companies do.

So what, you might say.

The same report details a 17% year over year increase in Best In Class Companies team attainment of sales quota, Laggards are showing a decrease of 6.9%!

Get access to the sales forecast!

Demand access

Help your sales guys make their numbers.

What my Blog really looks like?

The Wordle Cloud from the last six months entry.

What am I talking about?

'Taster' Seminar, London 21st June, Sales and Marketing Alignment Seminar

On June 21st I will be delivering another 'taster' workshop on Sales and Marketing Alignment.

Why should you bother spending a morning with me?

Well, if you want to improve the customer buying experience, understand your buyer's journey and be able to understand when they are moving to their next stage, then please join me in Ealing on Tuesday June 21st.

More information here

This is an exclusive event for Sales and Marketing Directors only.

The Movie Intro...

Who needs a Special Relationship when you can have something far more powerful: Alignment.

Dateline London.

I am writing this during President Obama's state visit to the UK. Lots of pomp and circumstance, 41 gun salutes and posh banquets. Both the Queen and the President have used that term “Special Relationship" to describe something that's supposed to exist. Of course it's tosh, something just to appeal to the vanity in the Old Country. Earlier in the day the Prime Minister and the President had referred to an essential relationship, better, but still sugar coating.

What we have here is a failure to be realistic.

When the USA and UK's interests are the same then it makes sense to be aligned, not essential and certainly not special.

So it is in business when sales and marketing share the same interests and goals they will naturally be more aligned. Try telling one of your sales reps that you think she is special. Maybe not.

Alignment means no finger pointing when things go wrong. Working on your Culture, Language and People.

Alignment means common ownership of the pipeline and forecast. Goodbye to silos, hello to openness.

The end result meaning that you can improve the customer buying experience and generate more profitable revenue, more predictably.

Who needs a Special Relationship when you can have something far more powerful: Alignment.

Do You Need a Budget to Qualify as Lead?

Should a prospect have a real budget for your services to be considered a lead/opportunity qualified to unleash your sales attack dogs, sorry I meant 'trusted advisors', of course.

Well, according to this Marketing Sherpa chart, 77% of marketers seem to pass leads to markerting that don't have a budget.

No frigging budget, dude!

Makes you wonder what qualifies for a lead in 2011?

How to Grab Attention

Join me in London on Tuesday April 12th

I am delivering a two hour morning seminar 'taster' on
Sales and Marketing Alignment in London on April 12th.

This complementary seminar is for Sales and Marketing Directors only.

We will look at the issues of:

> Increasing marketing's contribution to the sales pipeline

> Not delivering enough organic revenue growth

> Doing more with less

> Lack of respect between sales and marketing

If you want to know how to resolve these challenges,
then Reserve Your Place Now!

How do you know if your Marketing People are doing a good job?

Can you tell?

It’s easy to tell if a sales person or account manager is doing a good job, you simply ask… are they making their numbers.

It’s easy to tell if a business development manager is effective, are they building a pipeline of quality opportunities.

So what about marketing? How do you if a marketing manager is doing a good job?

If you ask them to organise events and brochures without any day to day contact with business development and sales, I am going to suggest that it is virtually impossible. Is that a big claim?

Recently, I was talking to a Marketing Manager of a global software company. He had responsibilities for events, big global events. Any opportunities were then scooped up by sales and BD. If the business was won, then it was down to the brilliance of sales. If no sales were made then obviously marketing had put on a lousy event.

There was no communication between sales and marketing.
No Alignment. Not so much Mind The Gap as Grow the Gap.

Now, when I asked this Marketing Manager, who wanted to contribute to the Company’s overall success, how he was judged on whether he was doing an effective job, he said nothing. He just shrugged his shoulders. Sad, isn’t?

Now, I am not looking to point any fingers. If companies choose not to align their sales and marketing, not only are they missing out on opportunities and revenue but they are probably misallocating their scarce marketing resources. And the most expensive resource they are wasting is the talent of their marketing staff.
Shame!

Get Aligned!