B2B Smarketing: The 5 Steps To Make Sales and Marketing Work T
In the popular book, “Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus” the Author John Gray explains that men and women have fundamentally different psychological differences exemplified by the book’s title: that men and women are from distinct planets.
In many B2B companies, similar divisions can exist
between Sales and Marketing. For instance, sales people will complain about poor quality leads generated by marketing. Conversely, comoros cell phone database the marketing people will complain about Sales’ weak follow up, if at all, of the leads.Sales sometimes thinks of Marketing as irrelevant party planners. While Marketing can view Sales as lazy and incompetent.Either way you look at it, it is not good for the bottom line.
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Here’s why: In a 2010 study by the Aberdeen Group, companies with strong sales and marketing alignment achieved 20% annual revenue growth.
So how can you get Sales and Marketing on the same sheet of music? It all comes down to goals. Once you have an agreement on goals, the marketing pipeline and sales quota become two ends of the same stick.
Here are the five steps to achieving “Smarketing,” where Sales and Marketing lay down arms, join forces and achieve greater revenue growth (and become co-recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize For Sales and Marketing Alignment):
Talk About Money
Sales and marketing need to talk about revenue, specifically. For marketing to do this, some math will be required, working backwards from sales:
What is your company or division’s revenue goal?
What is your average deal size (current revenue/current customers)?
How many customers do you need? (revenue goal/average deal size)?
What is your lead to conversion rate (current customers/current leads)?
Calculate the number of leads needed (customers needed/average lead to customer)
With these questions answered, marketing is already much closer to having a goal that is tied to sales. But wait, there’s more.
Marketing and Sales need to agree on the characteristics of a sales ready lead. It will boil down to a combination of “fit” and “interest.”
B2B Smarketing: The 5 Steps To Make Sales and Marketing Work Together image Lead Scoring resized 600
If there is a fit but low interest, Marketing needs to nurture the lead. If there is a fit and interest, Sales needs to follow up quickly.
Unfortunately, only 45% of businesses have established a company-wide definition of a sales-ready lead, according to a study by MarketingSherpa.
This is also a crucial time to form a clearer understanding of and agreement on your ideal customer or buyer persona.
Once sales and marketing have zeroed in on defining a sales ready lead, the hand off can improve dramatically.
Then, Marketing needs to define the different stages of the funnel (website visit, lead, marketing qualified lead, sales qualified lead, opportunity, sale).
Finally, Marketing and Sales must agree,
definitively, on who owns which part of the sales funnel. Also, make sure both sides understand that the buyer’s journey is not linear, but increasingly erratic.
B2B Smarketing: The 5 Steps To Make Sales and Marketing Work Together image Sales Funnel resized 600
2. Close The Loop
Closed-loop reporting, that is. If Marketing is throwing leads to Sales and doesn’t find out what happens to the leads, stop the madness. The system is broken.
Two critical tools are needed to make this happen:
Marketing automation software (e.g. HubSpot, Marketo)
CRM (customer relationship management) software (e.g. Salesforce, Nimble)
By reporting in a closed loop, marketing is able to send more information to sales (such as additional lead intelligence), and sales is able to provide feedback and sales activity reports to marketing.