B2B Sales and Marketing Alignment: How to Drive Collaboration for Higher ROI

8/8/2019 B2B Sales and Marketing Alignment: How to Drive Collaboration for Higher ROI

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intouchB2B Sales and Markeng Alignment: How to Drive Collaboraon for Higher ROI

Lead generaon is invariably at the heart of

misalignment between sales and markeng. In many

organizaons, markeng decries the lack of follow up

and closed-loop reporng. The sales force complains

about the quality of leads and their negligible impact

on the sales pipeline. The following steps address

these problems by providing a praccal road map for

beer sales and markeng alignment.

Execuve Sponsorship

Sales and markeng alignment can aect prots,

revenue, budget allocaon, compensaon, job

descripons, and other execuve-level issues. Thats

why execuve sponsorship is crical to the success

of any alignment eort. The level of involvement

depends on the degree of misalignment; only the

sales and markeng reporng execuve may be

the only leader involved, the whole C-suite may

be involved. Among other responsibilies, these

execuves must resolve conicts, remove any

obstacles and instuonalize alignment. They

should clarify the benets of success, such as

compensaon ed to goals, and the consequences of

noncompliance.

Goal Alignment

Without a common

goal, alignmenttaccs can be

easily derailed.

For example,

markengs goal is

oen producing the

highest possible

number of leads within budget. Oen, that goal can

actually hamper sales producvity because of the

me required by sales to properly follow up and

report back on the leads. Even a pipeline contribuon

from leads does not necessarily translate into a

benet for sales. What really maers is how much

work sales has to do to convert leads into revenue.

In this context, leadership must view lead generaon

eorts in terms of alternaves. Sales people can

and do generate their own leads. That eort comesat a cost. In fact, lead generaon investment is

unavoidable. Either markeng will generate leads

or sales has no choice but to do it themselves.

Leadership needs to know if markeng produces

some percentage of the leads more cost eecvely

than sales. If not, they need to hire more sales people

to generate their own leads. If markeng can generate

some or all of the leads more cost eecvely, then

the outcome should ulmately be an increase in sales

producvity. With beer leads, the sales team has

more me to close deals instead of prospecng.

J. David Green

Director of Best Pracces, MECLABS

Figure 1.

Based upon research from CSO Insights,

the average sales person spends nearly

19 percent of his me generang leads

and researching accounts. This so

cost, which is oen larger than the

enre markeng budget, means that

the CEO is funding lead generaon one

way or the other.

Other: Travel,

training, etc,

36.60%

Generang

leads/researching

accounts,

18.70%

Account service

calls,

15.20%

Administrave

tasks/meengs,

18.00%

Selling: Face-to-

face or over-the-

phone meengs,

11.50%
http://www.meclabs.com/http://www.meclabs.com/




The key to goal alignment is transparency. Both sales

and markeng must work hard to idenfy whatsworking and whats not, and let the facts speak for

themselves. Its also important for both teams to

share credit.

Service-Level Agreement

Sales and markeng leadership should

authorize and instuonalize service-

level agreement that denes and

documents the following:

What smaller, transaconal

opportunies go straight to inside

sales?

What goes to a tele-qualicaon

team?

What goes to the eld?

How much eort and me will

follow up require of eld sales,

inside sales, channel partners,

and the tele-qualicaon team? What are the reporng obligaons of

each group?

A common language should be established for key

milestones in the sales and markeng funnel (see

Figure 2) so that theres less confusion about what a

lead means, for example. With this approach, sales

and markeng can measure the conversion from one

stage to the next and narrow the invesgaon into

funnel problems.

To create these denions and policies, leadership

should establish a lead roundtable. This roundtable

should consist of sales and markeng thought leaders.

The group should not have more than 10 parcipants.

Its especially crical that those in the roundtable

have deep insight into customer buying behavior and

the respect of their peers.

Very large organizaons with mulple sales models

may need to develop roundtables for various marketsegments and processes, and make sure they

collaborate for standardizaon. Localizaon will be

necessary, to some degree, for global companies.

Aer the inial eort to dene and document follow-

up and reporng requirements, this roundtable

should reconvene approximately 30 days aer the

inial implementaon to review denions and rules,

and make course correcons. Thereaer, quarterly

meengs should suce, with some gradual rotaon

of new team members, as appropriate.

Opmizing sales capacity

With these working denions, sales and markeng

should conduct joint planning to address a number of

key quesons:

How much me and money does sales invest

in developing their own leads?

Figure 2.

Develop a common language to describe key stages of funnel conver

New leads

Registered leads

Rules-validated leads

Phone-ready leads

Phone-validated leads

Sales-ready leads

Sales-validated leads

Sales-forecasted opportunies

Sales outcomes

Tele-Qualic

Team

Sales

Buying

Cycle




What is the likely yield from this investment? What is the current likely yield from the

markeng investment in lead generaon?

The answers to these quesons will provide a baseline

for evaluang the return on investment for all new

lead programs. To be sure, esmates of me and

yield from prospecng sales acvity will be inexact

at best. And in most companies, closed-loop lead

programs are elusive. Sll, this informaon will help

everyone think more precisely about the economics

and tradeos involving funding more lead generaon

acvity, or simply hiring more sales people or

recruing more channel partners. Benchmarks from

third-party organizaons can also benet the planning

process as a sanity check against revenue projecons.

The next objecve should focus on using lead

generaon to improve sales producon. How many

sales opportunies should come from markeng?How much revenue should result? This eort, to some

degree, will require a collaborave exercise in capacity

planning for sales and tele-qualicaon teams.

In some cases, establishing a pilot will be the best

approach so that leadership can see whether a

more aligned lead-generaon approach has nancial

benet. Key aspects include the scope of the pilot,

the volume of leads, the expected funnel conversion

raos, and the pipeline contribuon.

Because of the elongated buying cycle in business-

to-business scenarios, execuve leadership must

work through the tradeos between more denive

answers and direconal indicators resulng from the

pilot. With that guidance, sales and markeng should

jointly assess the plan against the goal, and use that

informaon to rene future planning eorts and

improve operaonal eciency.

The gure above compares an ecient and an inecient deployment of sales resources across the buying cycle.

Moving sales resources out of the early stages of the buying cycle and replacing those resources with lower-cost and

more scalable forms of markeng touch increases the capacity of sales to produce revenue.

Figure 3.

As much as possible, replace

these sales resources with lower-

cost methods of markeng &

telemarkeng contact

These reallocatedsales resources

result in

increased

revenue capacity/

higher sales

producvity

Allocated

percent

of sales

resources

100%

0%

Buying cycle stages




Tele-Qualicaon Operaons as a Bridgebetween Sales and Markeng

Tele-qualicaon operaons (one or more people

who qualify and tele-nurture markeng inquiries,

and tele-prospect on behalf of sales) are crical to

improving sales producvity. Its imperave that this

team not have an inside sales role of closing deals.

Tele-qualicaon operaons reside in both the sales

and markeng departments, and good arguments

exist for locang this funcon in each department.

Regardless of which department owns this funcon,

the group must provide:

Sales-ready leads for sales

Precise feedback on responses for markeng.

Align each tele-qualicaon rep with the sales

professionals he supports to create teamwork and

mutual accountability. Use feedback from the tele-

qualicaon team to improve upstream markeng

campaigns and pracces, and use the feedback

from sales to improve the tele-qualicaon process.

This way, each tele-qualicaon representave will

funcon as a micro-bridge between those creang

markeng campaigns and those closing deals from

the leads they generate.

Evangelizing the New Approach

Prior to successfully aligning sales and markeng,most sales people - direct and indirect - typically have

a low regard for markeng leads; in fact, the beer

the sales person, the lower his regard. In the case of

indirect sales people, the problem is compounded

because they oen have a low opinion of leads from

most vendors.

This percepon maers. Without enthusiasc support

among sales professionals, the follow up on leads

(much less reporng) will not happen consistently and

the investment will be largely wasted. For this reason,

the lead program should be sold to sales. Target them

with an on-going markeng campaign, with the level

of eort corresponding to the size of the sales forceand their level of resistance:

Build credibility. Execuve sponsors should

announce the launch of the new approach

and inuenal sales thought leaders should

endorse it.

Educate. Conduct separate webinars for front-

line sales managers and their teams. Feature

sales leadership and members of the lead

roundtable. Explain the program to new sales

people and channel partners. Reinforce. When tele-qualicaon

representaves pass along the rst few leads,

have them reinforce the benets of the

program to sales professionals.

Remind. Link common denions to new lead

updates and email/web feedback loops.

Prove. Develop simple case studies and gather

tesmonials.

In short, use lead generaon taccs to sell the newlead program on an ongoing basis.

With the right approach, a lead generaon program

can be used to recruit new channel partners and

sales professionals. Who wouldnt want to work for

a company where its faster to close deals because

well-aligned sales and markeng departments result

in more qualied leads?

Suggeson: most companies will benet from a rao

of one tele-prospecng representave for every two

to four sales people.




Figure 1 is from the CSO Insight Sales Performance Opmizaon report, 15th edion: over 1,800 companiessurveyed. Copyright 2009 CSO Insights. All Rights Reserved.

MECLABS is a science lab (primary research) with a consultancy (applied research). We conduct

rigourous experiments in the new science of opmizaon and we apply our discoveries to help

leaders oprimize the nancial performance of their sales and markeng programs.

Contact us to talk about your sales and markeng challenges. Perhaps our research methodology

can help you - as a partner soluon provider or client.

800-810-7710

[email protected]
http://www.meclabs.com/mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]://www.meclabs.com/

B2B Sales and Marketing Alignment: How to Drive Collaboration for Higher ROI

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