Still the colouring-in department? Victoria Clarke reveals what sales really thinks of marketing
The relationship between the sales and marketing departments has long been documented as complicated, fractious and tense. Despite seemingly common business goals, number one being to gain more customers, the two business functions have often succeeded in pulling in totally opposite directions – all the while harbouring a lack of trust and respect for the other department. Rather like a love-hate sibling relationship, both sides know they need the other but that hasn’t stopped some significant bickering along the way.
Unfortunately these tensions are not confined to the history books just yet. Recent research from Brand Learning supports the fact there is still a significant disconnect between sales and marketing teams. In a survey of more than 100 senior marketing and sales directors at organisations across the globe, the research revealed that businesses are still struggling to achieve genuine joined-up thinking between their sales and marketing teams. More than a third (35 per cent) of marketing directors ranked their collaborations with their sales colleagues as a nine out of 10 or 10 out of 10, but only 12 per cent of sales professionals admitted their work with marketing was at that same level.
Commenting on the findings, Martin Adkins, group sales capability director at Brand Learning said: “Both marketing and sales teams need to expand their capabilities to work more effectively with each other and build a genuinely customer-centred organisation. The two functions still often sit in silos, suspicious of each other’s value and unwilling to come together as part of a connected customer agenda.”
Despite these latest findings, a growing number of sales and marketing departments are beginning to work together to create a more joined-up agenda. Insight and understanding of each team’s strengths and challenges is key to a successful coalition. So, what can marketers learn from the way their department is perceived by sales?
No more ivory tower
“It is always worth marketing listening to feedback from the field because in many ways the sales force is closest to your customers and knows their concerns the best,” says Nick De Cent, editor-in-chief at The International Journal of Sales Transformation. Customer centricity is a key focus among marketers so rather than just pay lip service to it, De Cent suggests marketers need to make the effort to visit real customers, as well as actively seek out feedback from sales colleagues.
De Cent reveals that he has come across an instance of marketing’s disregard for sales feedback recently in the pharmaceutical sector. The organisation’s sales reps were reporting an issue with a product, but unfortunately they weren’t believed by the programme management and were just accused of being difficult. Later, independent market research corroborated exactly what the sales force had been saying. The company then changed its approach with the product to better align it with what the marketplace was saying. If they hadn’t taken that action then potentially the whole product launch could have been derailed.
Sales enablement is haphazard
Sales enablement is a growing area that spans both the sales and marketing functions, and as yet is something only successfully achieved by a minority of brands. The challenge seems to revolve around both content and delivery, and crucially proving its relevance to all stakeholders, particularly the sales department.
“There can be a disconnect when it comes to sales enablement – particularly in the sales team’s mind, “ suggests Paul Woodroffe, general manager of product and channel at BT Global Services UK, who says this can cause the sales team to wonder why exactly they need to be learning about something.
“The solution for better sales enablement shouldn’t be to say to sales: ‘This will help you meet your targets’ because that’s making an assumption. Instead the solution should be to say to sales: ‘This is specifically what is happening in the marketplace at this point in time. Your competition will be attacking the market doing that and therefore you need to do this in order to counter the competition.’” Woodroffe emphasises that by demonstrating how and why sales enablement is relevant, marketers are far more likely to get buy-in from their sales colleagues.
Fergus Gilmore is MD at Deltek and comes from a strong sales background. He adds that in order to ensure sales enablement is effective, marketers must tailor the activity to suit a salesperson during different stages of their development. “To make sales enablement effective,” he says: “It is important to take a 360-degree view of what a salesperson requires at different stages of their development in the organisation – from on-boarding new talent to making existing talent more effective and also finding out what they need at different stages of the buying cycle. I’ve seen sales enablement focus exclusively on on-boarding and new product release training. To be effective, it must be more comprehensive than that.”
Two-way communication is key
Two-way communication is key to a successful coalition between the sales and marketing teams, and this needs to happen at every stage of a marketing campaign in order for both departments to be viewed as respected and credible. Trouble can arise when marketers fail to involve sales early on enough in a campaign, which can leave the sales team misinformed and disengaged. Gilmore says: “Including sales people in your planning process gets buy-in to your plan and regular updates with sales ensures that it’s a true team effort.”
Gilmore goes on to offer further advice though, which may ring true with some marketers. He remarks: “Marketers have to be strong in their convictions, be prepared to fight their corner and not be subservient to the sales team. Sales teams have often got strong personality types and I’ve seen cases where marketers can be intimidated by them.”
Jon Davies, head of new market development at Npower Business Solutions, reiterates the importance of effective communication. Despite his organisation making great strides towards aligning sales and marketing he suggests that generally: “Sales and marketing teams don’t spend enough time talking about what success looks like and how they can each contribute to that vision.” Davies reveals effective dialogue between sales and marketing at Npower Business Solutions is continuously improving, driven by the recognition that when it comes to attracting and retaining customers, sales and marketing are stronger together. He says the two departments are increasingly viewed as a natural extension of one another and this alignment is: “Vital to building long-term sustainable relationships with customers, rather than just meeting targets.”
Re-think lead management
The one word that is sure to spark debate from both sales and marketing teams is ‘leads’. Historically marketing has blamed sales for not following up leads properly, while sales has blamed marketing for not providing high enough quality leads. Highlighting the reoccurring ‘power play’ between functions, De Cent points out: “There has always been a rivalry and the blame game continues in some places.”
Mark Woodbridge, VP of international sales at SalesFusion, suggests one of the reasons for the ongoing disconnect is because marketers have typically held a very linear view of lead management. In this instance, marketers have focused on creating demand, warming prospects and then pushing them to sales for conversion. “The problem with this approach is that it doesn’t take into account the difference in buyers,” he points out. “Some buyers will follow a linear path to conversion but many won’t. In those circumstances, they get pushed to sales prematurely. Leads may tell sales they’re still researching and to follow up in three months but during this time, these leads can go cold if marketing has stopped their digital engagement.”
Woodbridge suggests the challenge with leads is made all the greater because of another instance of disconnect – that of digital versus non-digital customer journeys. He says the sales team can often have very limited visibility into the digital journey leads have taken before they ask to speak with a salesperson, which makes it difficult to pick up the conversation from where marketing has left off.
Despite these challenges, Woodbridge appears optimistic that the issue of lead management is improving – driven by how marketers are increasingly looking at the buyer experience in its sum as opposed to its parts (traditionally divided between sales and marketing). He comments: “Marketers are starting to address this disconnect with a focus on lead nurture and remarket programmes. They’re working in partnership with sales to map the buyer journey more closely and engage with prospects in a more personalised way.”
John Hulwick, VP of sales at SalesPredict, offers his advice on the perennial issue of leads, in particular, highlighting how technology can play a key role. “Installing an accurate lead scoring system that incorporates predictive analytics is an important part, but it’s also essential to measure attribution all the way through to the closed deal and even beyond for models that are highly reliant on upsells.” He adds: “Both [sales and marketing] need an objective measure of lead quality that is driven by the organisation’s historical record of success and failure, and encompasses the best knowledge available in predictive modelling. With this in place it’s easier for sales and marketing to work towards a common goal and view themselves as part of the same team.”
Objectives and goals
Like Hulwick in his comments above, all of the spokespeople in this feature believe sales and marketing need to work harder as a team – and nowhere is this more crucial than when it comes to aligning business objectives.
“The main challenge is ensuring that teams respect each other’s drivers,” says Davies. “They need to work with each other to understand their objectives and what their customers care about.”
To help address this challenge, Davies reveals Npower Business Solutions regularly hosts customer and stakeholder roundtables about upcoming energy policies, designed to help customers interpret complex legislative or regulatory change. The events are typically driven by the marketing team but enable sales managers to then work with customers to develop the right energy solution for their business. “It might not feel like a traditional campaign,” says Davies, “but it does require the marketing and sales teams to come together and really listen to what the customer is saying.”
Another organisation to be making good headway around aligning sales and marketing objectives is BT. Woodroffe reveals much work has been done at the organisation to overcome the issue of misaligned goals between sales and marketing, although he admits there can sometimes still be a disconnect between the two teams. He says: “The marketing team measures campaigns from generating leads and the sales orders that come from those leads, whereas the sales team is more interested in revenue and margin (particularly at certain times of the year), but this is something we are starting to get much better at aligning the closer we work.” Woodroffe reveals the way in which BT’s sales and marketing teams are increasingly developing industry-specific propositions together is one of the ways the organisation is working towards eradicating any remaining misalignment.
Finally, the important thing about aligning business goals, concludes Woodbridge, is that marketers need to understand different sales objectives will require a different marketing approach. “To align simple marketing and sales goals, the company needs to understand its position and organise its marketing resources and targets accordingly.”
The relationship between sales and marketing has seen a huge shift in recent years – impacted by technology, the rise in content marketing and buyer behaviour, to name a few. As the responsibilities of the two business functions increasingly overlap, both teams will need to work hard to better understand the challenges and motivations of their sister department. Open, honest and two-way dialogue is paramount to a successful partnership because only then can issues truly be resolved.
