Marketing Clique

Tear Down That Wall!

It's here. Sales and marketing are quickly converging. Buyers have changed the way they buy. Sellers, then, need to change they way they sell. Sales needs to cozy up to marketing. Marketing needs to suck it up and realize they're really "sales reps" in disguise... Eeew!

“If you look at the sales and marketing funnel, people are envisioning a blend, a fusion,” said Geoff Rego, CEO and co-founder of Market2Lead. “Marketing is sales, for all practical matters, because no prospect wants to talk to the sales guys anymore. The buying cycle has changed completely.”—Geoff Rego, CEO, Market2Lead (acquired by Oracle), excerpt from B2B Online article.

What has changed?

• Buyers now have more decision-making information at their disposal
• Buyers now have more control over how they digest product and service information
• Buyers do not want to be dependent on sales reps to pitch product information
• There is more risk associated with bringing on additional sales reps and expecting them to produce short-term results
• Sales collateral can be quickly and efficiently disseminated over the Web, thereby reducing workload on sales
• Leads can be coached from many different sources, simultaneously, and scored for their relevancy over time
• Sales does not have to follow up on and develop every single lead that comes in through marketing
• Social media marketing is real
• Marketing drives sales' success
• Sales drives marketing's success

What has stayed the same?

• People still make decisions based on emotion
• Buyers' due diligence will be based on how much risk is associated with the decision they're making
• Many companies still live and die by quarterly performance
• The sales pipeline is still critical
• Most organizations have a tough time with accurate forecasts because salespeople tend to either overestimate or sandbag, and marketing is unrealistic
• Most companies will be slow to react to the new tools that have become available
• Technology is not a "silver bullet"

Sales & Marketing Need to Buddy Up

The reality of most products, especially in the B2B world, and regardless of how easy a company thinks it should be to sell, is that there are complicating factors in the sales process - things that can retard the buying process. Most products and services are not complicated by the seller; rather, the buyer harbors difficult-to-predict decision-making criteria, most of which is around mitigating risk. Marketing, therefore, needs to align with sales to understand where automation may be helpful, how to more accurately score leads, and how to work with sales to develop a more accurate sales pipeline to keep the executive team and investors better informed and establish realistic expectations.

Conclusion

Sales and marketing are melding. This symbiotic relationship is important in any organization, but is accentuated where sales pipelines tend to be longer, and there is more risk surrounding the acquisition of the product or service. There is more that marketing can do to help sales be successful. Much of that will be rooted in marketing automation, lead generation, and lead scoring. Likewise, there is more that sales can do help marketing be more successful, like assuming ownership of a lead at the appropriate time and therefore realizing a more desirable close ratio.

The marriage of marketing and sales is an exciting relationship, but there will be many questions about how to properly develop, deploy, and measure its success. I look forward to sharing more thoughts in upcoming posts!