Marketing Clique

As the alliance between marketing and sales becomes more prevalent and increasingly interdependent, there's mounting pressure for marketing to contribute to the bottom line. While all companies measure their success by revenue and profit, there are varying tolerances with revenue-producing timelines. Typically sales is on the front lines and held responsible for driving the lion's share of results. But what about marketing? And how does this fit in with the new world of marketing's direct role in driving B2B lead generation?

Public companies are laser focused on quarterly results with a lot of emphasis placed on monthly numbers. Sales managers are asked to update forecasts on a weekly basis, if not daily, all with the aim of submitting more accurate forecasts. Shareholders are anxiously waiting for their ROI and company management is eager to demonstrate its ability to hit its number. The pressure on sales and marketing is clear, but sales and marketing still struggle to find the best way to attribute revenue. Was it a sale that originated because of a lead generation campaign that was birthed in marketing? Or, was it the pure grit of sales that muscled it through and got it closed before month-end? Who should be held responsible if target number isn't reached?

Many private companies are bank rolled by investors who are looking to hit an annual target. And public companies answer to the shareholders and board members. Encouragement from investors is correlated with how far along the year has progressed. If it's the 4th quarter and the numbers look iffy, investors are calling for board meetings. Re-orgs are right around the corner and heads might roll! Small businesses are focused on monthly performance but even more excited about what can be done to increase revenues year-over-year. By the way, it's easy to forget that 99% of businesses in the United States are small businesses.

What this means for marketing and sales

The marketing timeline should absolutely be correlated with the sales timeline. Lead generation efforts and marketing activities should be carefully mapped to company requirements to show revenue. New product announcements, events, and client/prospect communications should always be arranged in consort with sales campaigns.

Also, marketing efforts need to be rewarded. And since marketing and sales are increasingly working together in true team fashion, that means management may want to re-examine how to incentivize marketing and sales.

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!

These days, marketing is increasingly accountable for sales and operational efficiency. Management is measuring the success of marketing using metrics that could just as well be out of the sales group's weekly report. What's more, marketing is required to show return on investment (ROI) each step of the way. With these mounting pressures, flat or decreasing budgets, and a seemingly endless list of daunting tasks, marketing understandably turns to technology.

What are some of the most high-impact technology-related marketing issues?

Sales force automation - Is the sales database connected to the same database marketing uses? How and when are prospects handed off to sales? In an upcoming blog post I will introduce more on this topic, including lead scoring and marketing automation, and which vendors are the most visible thought leaders: Marketo, Eloqua.

Forecasting - Marketing can earn more clout by contributing to an accurate revenue forecast. Make the forecast funnel make sense for your organization. Align marketing activities that are directly related to sales, and measure the success. That way marketing is seen as having a direct-line impact on revenue. Furthermore, marketing can justify increased marketing spend in areas that can be accurately attributed to revenue growth.

Website copy - Traditionally, website content has been positioned with two types of visitors in mind: 1) The website visitor who is in the introductory phase of the buying process and 2) The website visitor who is "low in the funnel" and on the verge of making a buying decision. The reality is that it's often a long and winding road. Depending on the complexity, or risk, of the product or service, website visitors may be hitting a site for a variety of reasons during the buying process. What's more, there is often more than one person involved in the consideration process, which can span many months, if not years. Make sure website copy is speaking to the appropriate personas, is written with search engine optimization (SEO) in mind, and contains easy-to-identify areas for the different types of visitors.

By coordinating the consumer's end-to-end experience, companies could enjoy revenue increases of 10-20 percent. -McKinsey report, March 2010

Social Media - What are the best ways to effectively use Twitter, Facebook fan page, video? Each brings technology issues, input from sales, marketing, and customer service. Then there is the requirement of authenticity, and ensuring the company brand is accurately portrayed. This is a simultaneous recipe for success and horror.

Content Management System (CMS) - Here is a perfect example of something that used to be "owned" by IT. Now it's common to see it owned by marketing. Work closely with IT to ensure the right website content is getting to the right visitors at the right time. There are plenty of search marketing implications to selecting and implementing a new CMS, like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal.

Conference Calls - Conference calls and web-based meetings with conference calls have become regular marketing events. Knowing the features and benefits of the different webcasting and conference call technologies is now a must for marketing. Ensure that links to archived webcasts and conference calls can be automatically updated on the website, and integrated into online sales and marketing collateral. What used to be solely an IT issue, conference calls and webcasts are regularly overseen by marketing.

"The Deck" - Endless PowerPoint presentations are created for endless reasons by an endless number of people on any given day. Chances are great that marketing ought to be policing how the company's brand is being portrayed (adherence to style guide) especially when these presentations will be viewed outside of the organization. The best way to collaborate on slide decks, to use common graphics, to collaborate on content, and to keep numbers up-to-date is to use a relatively new application called SlideRocket. SlideRocket is scalable, enterprise-class, software as a service (SaaS) presentation system that saves organizations from the hellish and all-too-common scenario of disparate file folder in multiple departments on multiple computer hard drives. Get relief. Check out SlideRocket.

Digital Advertising - Search and display advertising can now be closely measured and adjusted by marketing. Optimizing website landing pages has become a must. Test, test, test.

The list goes on. Technology continually wiggles its way into the daily activities of the modern marketer.