Three Ways Sales & Marketing Can Collaborate to Boost Revenue

It’s an old challenge: getting sales and marketing to work together productively. And while there are certainly pressing reasons for tight collaboration between them, few large firms are able to align sales and marketing in a way that enhances both efforts.
 

“It’s amazing that this issue has persisted for decades,” says Steve Grossman, leader of the sales effectiveness practice at Mercer Human Resources. “It has become a bit better thanks to software, but most B2B firms are still not [aligning sales and marketing] well. It’s mostly a people problem.”

Three Levels

Sales and marketing must be aligned at two levels. The first is low-level collaboration, with marketing providing salespeople with the right collateral materials to hand out or refer prospects to online. Material should be fresh, reflect the latest messaging salespeople use, and be easy for reps to find.
 

Reps should define new material and review it before it is finalized. Marketers should revise, toss, cut, or expand material according to effectiveness in the field. Moreover, sales and marketing must collaborate on making material relevant to the latest company message, marketing’s objectives, and prospect reactions, which salespeople know best.
 

The next level of alignment involves “all the things marketing does to establish the brand and get the phone to ring,” Grossman explains. This includes generating leads from lists, Web visits and events, conferences, and advertising.
 

The right leads go to the right reps fast. Leads are qualified or scored according to criteria agreed upon by sales and marketing. Leads not ready to buy but with long-term potential are retained and nurtured by marketing, not lost by frustrated reps. Grossman says marketing should own lead-generation software, and sales should own pipeline software.
 

Most important, marketing must build a segmentation model of customers. According to Grossman, “this gives reps the right segments to focus on and positions you as the best provider by segment.”
 

Value propositions, data, proof points, and cases reps use to sell all flow from aligned segmentation. Each is customized by segment and individual accounts. Sales and marketing collaborate on winning strategies at the account level using the company’s sales methodology.
 

Data on customers and prospects help in initial segmentation. But high-value collaboration is people intensive. Salespeople and marketers must have the right experience to make it happen.

Turf Warfare

Misunderstandings and the tendency to defend the team’s turf are big hurdles, however. “Sales does not understand marketing, and marketing does not understand sales,” Grossman summarizes. “There is finger-pointing. The VP of sales and VP of marketing must collaborate and set the pace. They must understand each other.”
 

Companies that do alignment well regularly assign salespeople to marketing, and vice versa. Rotation is essential to alignment.
 

Grossman advises against reorganization: “Organizational changes do not help; it’s a cop out. [Some firms try to align sales and marketing efforts through] organizational change, and it never works. It’s a culture and leadership issue.” He also thinks that altering your compensation plan would accomplish little: “Performance-comping marketers does not help.”
 

Training helps – if done right. Training marketers on the sales process and understanding where in the process marketing can be most useful is key. Have marketers spend time on the road with reps – “walk in their shoes,” as Grossman says. 

Tech to the Team

Better software helps somewhat. Grossman says SAVO helps get reps the best marketing content, allows them to customize it, and provides feedback ratings.
 

Company size might be an issue. “It might be a lot harder to [calibrate sales and marketing efforts] for a team of one hundred people than for ten,” Grossman notes.
 

Ken Thoreson, managing partner of the Acumen Management Group, says lack of sales and marketing alignment is still one of the top three problems he encounters with clients. He has a simple test to spot it. “We ask the salespeople, ‘What is your value proposition?’ and record the answers. If we get different or fuzzy messages, they are not aligned. If they are the same, then they are aligned.”
 

He, too, sees silos as the culprit. “Marketing does name recognition and generates leads. Sales and marketing need to be intertwined, especially with social media. The value proposition and marketing message must be integrated and proven in the sales process.”
 

Instead, explains Thoreson, marketers announce where the company supposedly shines, then reps sell in a totally different manner. “They need a commonality of message.”
 

Thoreson believes marketers should regularly sit in on sales calls and presentations and visit trade shows: “If marketing holds a focus group of customers, reps should sit in.” Smart marketing departments have focus groups just for salespeople who tell marketers in depth what is working. These recurring practices are more important than special training.
 

Modern CRM has helped. “Most CRM now has campaigns and other marketing functions,” says Thoreson. He recommends that marketing own CRM. “[Marketing is] better at database management and can get high-quality leads to reps for follow up and execution.” Conversations about lead quality forces reps and marketers to work together.
 

But, continues Thoreson, many CRM systems are still owned by sales. “Reps may not put leads in CRM or follow them up. They do not track, so leads may go cold. They do not manage. Marketers should know how many leads came out of a show or campaign, how many were A’s, B’s, and C’s, and then track them.”

Structured Solutions

Like Grossman, Thoreson says good alignment does not differ by industry. It is easiest if a company sells in a small region or vertical niche. Smaller firms have an advantage, because their processes are less complex. “It’s also more critical for smaller companies, because they have a smaller marketing spend. They go out of business if they are not aligned,” says Grossman.
 

But the clearest pattern is this: leading companies do alignment well, while laggards and middle-of-pack firms do not. Thoreson cites Caterpillar and Johnson & Johnson as leaders in alignment. He thinks, unlike Grossman, that corporate structure can help: “I urge that you have one VP of sales and marketing who reports to the CEO, not separate VPs.”
 

Thoreson thinks compensation or budgeting can promote collaboration: “You can make the marketing budget depend on sales success. You might have bonuses for marketers, too, but at least the marketing budget should depend on success. The old rule was, if sales are down, marketing just comes up with another plan.” Budgets can be set by division, or they can be firmwide, depending on how the company is organized.
 

Consultants advise, large firms struggle, but some smaller firms align sales and marketing because they have to.

FASTER PACE

Visible Technologies provides software and services to monitor and analyze social media, helping firms understand how they and their competitors are perceived in the market.
 

“We were started by venture capital in 2005, and we are in a fast-growing market,” explains Visible Technologies’s marketing vice president Debbie DeGabrielle. “Competition is intense. There are one hundred ninety-seven companies who do a piece of what we do, so we cannot make missteps or duplications.”
 

DeGabrielle heads a marketing team of eight people. Visible Technologies’s vice president Geoff Farris has 15 people on the sales force. Four account executives are spread across the United States, and three are in the United Kingdom selling globally to English-speaking countries. Four reps sell to such agencies as Young & Rubicam, and three insides salespeople qualify leads, demonstrate products, and help field reps gather information.
 

“Geoff Farris and I talk multiple times a day,” DeGabrielle says. “We are very clear on goals. I know his quotas and what he needs to meet them. We build a funnel that will enable him to get there.”
 

“We talk constantly,” Farris concurs. “We have trust and confidence that Debbie will give us the leads we need.”
 

At Visible Technologies, sales and marketing interact on multiple levels. Marketers go to trade shows, set up booths, and work the crowd alongside reps. They also sit in on weekly sales meetings.
 

“Field reps can reach out to Debbie or a marketer for help,” Farris says. “They can say, ‘Here is an opportunity for marketing,’ or they can say, ‘I need help developing assets for this vertical.’”
 

Marketers work directly with reps to build special marketing programs for verticals. “It is collaborative and open dialogue,” DeGabrielle says. “Everyone is either in presales or sales. We in marketing are in presales. Everything we do has to drive sales.”
 

DeGabrielle says marketers understand what a quality lead is and don’t want to waste time with leads that are not well qualified: “I have been in organizations where there were more people to qualify leads, so we just threw leads at them. We can’t do that here. We don’t waste marketers’ time.” Much qualification is done digitally, according to papers downloaded from the Visible Technologies Website.  
 

Visible Technologies uses its own tools to monitor its brand online. If anyone is looking for social-media monitoring, a marketer establishes contact immediately and asks if a call can be set up with a field rep. Other leads are sent to inside reps for qualification and, if they are genuine opportunities, distributed via Salesforce to reps, who have 24 to 48 hours to respond. Marketing does all the data entry.
 

Both DeGabrielle and Farris are broadly experienced. DeGabrielle, who has worked in sales, makes speeches at customer events and goes on sales calls. “I tell Geoff, ‘Give me some accounts, and I might scare you,’” she jokes. Farris was vice president of sales and marketing when Visible started in 2006, so he knows marketing well.
 

DeGabrielle says aligning marketing materials with rep needs is easier because the company doesn’t “have a big pile of material.” She continues, “This market changes very fast, so we change fast. We are agile. If [our marketing materials] are a year old, we throw them away.” Farris agrees: “Materials are easy to find.”
 

Reps work better when they are trained on new materials, which is sometimes difficult because reps are busy on the road. “Sometimes they can’t make it [to the training sessions],” Farris acknowledges. “But they share best practices and successful presentations.”

Holding Handhelds

Training and collaboration are done with smartphones. “We could not have done it five years ago,” Farris says. “Reps spend 10 percent of their time in offices, so they need technology. They are good at it and can stay in touch virtually 24 hours a day.”
 

Will all this still work as Visible Technologies grows? “There may come a time when we will have to formalize [our collaborative efforts] more,” DeGabrielle admits.
 

Affiliated sells CRM, IT infrastructure, managed services, application development, and consulting to midsize companies, mostly in Ohio. Company president Mike Moran heads the four-person marketing team and does some selling himself. He has a sales manager and four reps.
 

Two of Affiliated’s major clients fell away in the first quarter of 2011, so Moran scrambled and brainstormed with the entire sales and marketing teams on how to replace the lost business. Affiliated developed a series of Webinars on CRM best practices. Current customers were invited to participate, and salespeople and marketers were tasked with inviting prospective customers.
 

Marketers created the messaging. Salespeople conducted precalls to remind invitees to attend and determine their specific interests so the Webinar presentations could be tweaked. Reps also made follow-up calls. Affiliated consultants conducted the Webinar itself. Ultimately, the teamwork paid off: out of 600 invitees, 100 registered and 60 attended. Affiliated snagged two new major accounts to replace the lost business.
 

Moran says this kind of tight collaboration is the norm at Affiliated. Ideas for new marketing materials can come from reps, who always review the new resources. Additionally, reps precall before marketing events to pique interest and tweak the event. And they make follow-up calls. Affiliated often gets business from invitees who do not attend events but express interest in them. The company is moving to automate this last step. Thus far, however, tight collaboration has preceded getting the latest software, but that priority has paid off big for the small firm.
 

Graph: How Effective Is Marketing in Boosting Sales?

How well marketing fills the pipeline with quality leads that close and increase revenue is an important measure of sales and marketing alignment.

	Top 20% of companies	Middle 50% of companies	Lagging 30% of companies
Percent of pipeline generated by marketing	50%	11%	2%
Percent of marketing leads that close	48%	16%	2%
Percent increase in annual revenue generated by marketing campaigns	20%	7%	-3%

Source: Aberdeen Group survey of 414 companies in February 2011.