Aligning Sales and Marketing…concretely
Aligning Sales and Marketing has become a corporate catch-phrase. It’s a favorite topic with Marketing Automation people and has become one of their big claims these days. But what it mostly is, is a genuine challenge for marketers. So, if you think that the purpose of Marketing is to identify and qualify leads by developing lead generation ops and nurturing campaigns, well, you’re mistaken. You’re only halfway there. If you think that the key purpose of B2B Marketing is to impact sales productivity, then you know that Marketing is not just about delivering qualified, engaged leads.
From SQL to SAL
When marketers provide Sales Qualified Leads and have agreed with the sales department on all of the actions it needs to conduct, the first job of a sales person is to ensure the lead’s relevance, its qualification and level of engagement.
For many people in Sales, this job just means a phone call or e-mail whose sole objective is to know whether the contact has a project or not… a bit short, don’t you reckon? Unfortunately, it’s a widespread reality.
The first consequence is often a quick conclusion by the sales department: “Marketing doesn’t give us enough qualified leads”. The second consequence is the conclusion made by marketers: “We have trouble finding prospect data that is qualified enough”. Or else, “We’ll have to beef up our nurturing programme… Or optimize our lead scoring.”
These conclusions limit both Marketing and Sales to very strict roles that can paralyze the business. And it’s quite revealing of the silos that often exist between the two.
What exactly is a Sales Qualified Lead?
An SQL is not just the result of a qualification and engagement level scoring. It should also more finely suggest the type of engagement in order to inform Sales on the right strategy to adopt, the most efficient buying vision, in other words, it should act as a force to bring forward proposals focusing on what you should sell to the prospect and how you should do it.
Value your sales expertise
Salespeople first job is not about validating the existence of a project with a client or prospect and then ‘jump on them’ and do everything possible to prove why your solution is the best. It should focus on defining a sales strategy on how you can make leads aware and educate them about their own strategic issues, their problem or an opportunity… For this, two options are available:
- Direct sales action and/or
- Give the possibility to include a lead to a more specific marketing or nurturing program.
This will create the right level of legitimacy and authority for sales engagement.
Three key benefits:
- Sales people are truly engaged with their expertise since they decide what sales strategy they want to run according to each prospect, using the campaigns and content made available to them by marketing. In a way, they become marketers themselves,
- Marketing content and resources are used more efficiently,
- Marketing can conduct finer, more effective campaigns and customize them.
What does this mean for Marketing?
The aim of a content strategy is to create and disseminate consistent, relevant, valuable content to attract and capture a clearly defined target and engage it in a sales relationship.
Marketing must be able to establish its target in a favorable buying perspective, develop a proper Buying Vision and monitor its consistency throughout the prospect buyer’s journey. Content creation should not only serve the purpose of qualifying and engaging leads but also provide effective support to sales. A good Service Level Agreement between Sales and Marketing should not only establish rules of sales engagement but also define all of the Marketing resources available to Sales:
- Specific campaign flows / Drip Marketing
- Business Cases
- ROI and TCO (Total Cost Ownership) Calculator
- Client testimonials
- Etc.
Conclusion
Marketing has truly changed and the large possibilities provided by Marketing automation and CRM platforms are increasing the challenges and responsibilities of each teams. But if there was just one challenge, or if we were to choose the most exciting one, it would without question be about aligning Sales and Marketing… concretely.
