Marketing: 7, Sales: 0?

Humm…

But after all, what do marketing and sales have to do with the results of a possible soccer match?

Everything and nothing…

Nothing, because they are not comparable; everything, because sometimes the interaction between marketing and sales resembles your national soccer team.

Have you noticed that we have a group of stars and that the sum of their skills should make an exceptional team with exceptional results?

So why can’t it?

It’s the same with marketing and sales.

We often have an excellent sales team, professional, dedicated, dynamic, and fighting non-stop.

In parallel, we also have a marketing team that is a pleasure to watch, creative, dynamic, and many times brilliant.

Like the national soccer team, the sum of the parts doesn’t often produce something extraordinary, quite the opposite.

Not rarely, the misalignment is such that it is hard to understand how the amount of money invested in marketing does not generate the corresponding result in business opportunities for the sales team or sales itself when that is the case.

I am writing this article with this theme because, recently, we have had quite a large number of projects in companies in the field of commercial consulting that focus precisely on this issue — the need for more alignment between marketing and sales.

These alignment projects often focus on three main components:

• Strategy
• Marketing
• Sales

And how all of them should interact so that, on the ground, every euro invested corresponds to a positive balance in terms of business done.

In some cases, we even have a 30% to 40% increase in effective commercial results due to changes in how the different components work and interact with each other.

Although these projects can cover many variables, there is usually a common denominator, at least in the last projects we have carried out.

Lack of communication!

In most cases, marketing and sales need to be informed about the strategy defined by the organization.

Why has the path been taken? What are the margins for maneuvering, as well as other aspects?

Similarly, when marketing creates a strategy, it often doesn’t involve salespeople in creating the pieces or the messages that need to be transmitted.

At least two situations can be generated by this detail alone.

The salespeople, not feeling involved in the creation process, adhere more slowly and difficulty to the use of the marketing materials that are delivered to them;
The materials are sometimes well done conceptually, but at the operational level, they don’t adhere to the field because they need more information from those in daily contact with customers and know firsthand the issues and difficulties that arise.
Problems also often arise in the communication between strategy and sales.

By not communicating the options and directions taken, salespeople do not understand the “essence” of what is behind it. As a result, they tend to invent and deviate from the path at the slightest opportunity.

The funny thing is that all this could have been avoided if we had integrated communication in the Strategy, Marketing, and Sales from the very first moment.

But if your company now looks like this and feels that you need to get the return you should from what you are investing in marketing, then one of the problems might be this.

Why don’t you ask for a commercial diagnostic meeting so we can analyze this issue together with you?

This week take a moment to think about this issue.

It may seem simple, but it has much to do with it.

Originally published at Results Driven.