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!

Is there a Sales and Marketing Alignment Problem?

What do your colleagues feel about the how well your Sales and Marketing teams work together?

Want a rough defintion of Sales and Marketing Alignment?

How about:

“A state of agreement or cooperation among Sales and Marketing, with a common cause or viewpoint.”

So is there coperation with a common cause, something like Revenue or not?

Tim Reisterer and Diane Emo wrote in "Customer Message Managment" a little section on "Is there a Problem". Tim and Diane suggest that you ask the following:

Is there a Sales and Marketing Alignment Problem?

My Role is:

I think that we have a Sales and Marketing Alignment problem because:

The challenges that could prevent us from correcting this problem are:

The company goals or projects that will suffer most if we don’t correct the problem are:


Could you answer those questions?

More importantly, could they be answered acrosss your company?

Would there be some agreement between Sales and Marketing on the answers?

Hey, you don't need any consultants to do this.

Why not give it a go?

If you want a nice Word Document or pdf with these questions , just drop me a line Rod Sloane.

Is there a Sales and Marketing Alignment Problem?

Interview with John Watton CMO of ShipServ

My interview with John Watton


John has 20 years’ marketing leadership experience in the IT and telecommunications industry, spanning software, managed services and outsourcing. Before joining ShipServ, John was Director of Global Marketing for telecoms software pioneer Cramer Systems, where he was responsible for marketing communications and demand generation worldwide. In 2006 Cramer was acquired by Amdocs in one of the biggest ever deals involving a European software business.

Previously, John held marketing management positions at Microsoft, Ariba, SAP and Oracle.

John has received many awards in recognition of his marketing leadership and in 2009 was named Marketer of the Year by B2B Marketing Magazine. He has a B.Sc. in Computer Science from the University of Manchester.