Strengthening the Marketing-Sales Interlock
Today's marketing and sales organizations are vastly different than they were even two or three years ago. The global financial crisis created ongoing impacts and the rise of digital and social media led to a massive shift in the nature of the relationship between consumers and brands. As a result, marketing has had to become more attuned to the world of sales - and sales more aligned with marketing. However, the much vaunted benefits of this alignment remain largely unrealized by most organizations.
Sales teams, aided and abetted by powerful sales force automation (SFA) and customer relationship management (CRM) solutions, have become used to the benefits of data, customer insight and real-time analytics. This has provided sales executives, vice presidents and finance teams alike with management, forecasting and business decision-making power that has positively affected the entire lead-to-close process.
Marketing teams, similarly, are now living in a world with abundant data. Every digital interaction can be tracked, tagged and reported. Improving attribution models are allowing marketers to follow and engage leads across mobile and social networks.
At the core of this success has been the strategic deployment of technology platforms that support and enable an alignment between the sales and marketing units. However, maximizing the success of this technology means addressing the same challenges that often face other IT programs - lack of alignment, unclear operational accountability and entrenched “ways of working.” And organizations that only deploy technology in one area (for example, sales) without matching their investment in marketing technology (or vice versa) can find that lead velocity and deal velocity are out of sync.
This paper investigates the best practices and suggests approaches for improving the connection between sales and marketing.
This report provides a high level analysis of the best practices in driving and managing leads. It focuses on the vital interlock between the marketing and sales teams and provides frameworks to help optimize the flow of leads between them in order to dramatically improve lead quality and revenue potential.