Willow here.

How familiar do the stats on this slide feel?:

Look at the last 2 points.  The sales folk (for whatever reason) are doing Marketing’s job – and when Marketing does come up with something it’s largely ignored!

I rest my case!

Sounds great and conscientious doesn’t it that Sales is producing their own selling materials – but are they expert in doing this, and is this really “selling?”

Similarly – if Sales is rejecting 95% of marketing deliverables, what a waste of marketing spend!  Let’s say that 50% of 1 Marketer’s time is spent on coming up with deliverables that Sales can use, and if we assume an average marketer costs $100k/annum – that’s nearly a $50k salary waste!

Challenge #7 – Aligning Sales & Marketing

It’s tempting to say that Sales is from Mars and Marketing is from Venus – but I think that’s a cop out.  We all have the same goal – selling stuff, and satisfying customers (so they come back, and so that they spread the word.)  I suspect we’re just not acting to make both parties realise that they share the same goal, albeit following different paths to get there.

What should we do?

All you need to do is Google “sales and marketing alignment”, and you’ll get a plethora of advice.

Here’s my suggestions for Aria Partners:

1. Share the goals – (as examples) incent Sales to get maximum numbers turning up at events, and similarly incent Marketing on the revenue that comes in
2. Involve Sales in Marketing’s job – get Sales involved in marketing research, brochure planning, campaign planning etc
3. Involve Marketing in Sales’ job – how often do your marketers go on sales calls?
4. Joint meeting attendance – does a representative of each of Sales or Marketing regularly attend the other department’s meetings, planning sessions etc? Indeed – why are they different departments? (BTW did you notice my job title is Director of Sales & Marketing?!)

Help is at hand

Aria’s MESSAGE is that your success makes our success – and hence we’re here to help.

Contact us to see how we can work in partnership to ALIGN YOUR SALES & MARKETING RESOURCES to achieve MORE SUCCESS.

Coming up

In the next edition, we’ll review Challenge #8 finding good marketing staff – and I’ll provide my usual commentary.