Why Are We Still Talking About Sales and Marketing Alignment?
Sales and marketing alignment has become an insurmountable issue in the sales world. Attempts to unite these two entities has gone on for years, and yet there still hasn’t been a concrete solution. Why haven’t we found a resolution? Why are we still talking about it? There are a lot of barriers to getting alignment between marketing and sales. Understanding these barriers, and how to solve them, allows organizations to get their sales and marketing teams on the same page. Chris Ryan, interviewed by John Golden, discusses the barriers to sales and marketing alignment.
This expert sales interview explores:
- How having different objectives creates misalignment
- The importance of unifying measurements and metrics
- Changes in the business world
A Difference in Objectives:
The first of many reasons why sales and marketing don’t often end up on the same page has to do with a difference in objectives. Salespeople are looking to close business and make their number for each quarter. But, if you’re a good marketer, you’re looking out into the future two to three quarters, somethings even years. There’s a difference between sales more short-term focus, and marketing’s more long-term focus, that creates misalignment.
Metrics and Measurements:
A second reason why there isn’t an easy alignment between sales and marketing has to do with the way that success is measured. There is often a lack of credible metrics and tracking systems, so you don’t really know who is responsible for certain tasks, or how and when certain people are supposed to do what. At the end of the day, this leads to sales pointing at marketing, and marketing pointing at sales, with neither team making concrete changes. For sales, metrics are a little bit easier, because they have a number to hit at the end of each quarter. For marketing, it can be a bit more nebulous because they don’t have the same kind of focused measure of success. In order to bridge the gap between the two entities, management must create and enforce metrics at every stage of the process for both sales and marketers.
Changes in the Business World:
A lot of things have changed recently in the sales and business world; not only in how marketing and selling are done but also in how people buy and make purchases. And yet, despite these changes, sales and marketing are still living and operating in the past. The success that they had years ago can actually become an enemy today if employees don’t learn to adapt and change with how things are done. It can be hard to get marketing and sells, even at a leadership level, into the same room to create and agree upon a shared metric and workflow in place to support a good revenue generation system.
But, educating staff on what really works, and what doesn’t work, is vital for an organizations success. Management must take the lead in initiating the creation and implementation of these procedures.
To learn more about the barriers to sales and marketing alignment, and how to resolve them, watch the entire expert sales interview.
About our Host:
John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.
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