Milestone Group Quarterly: January 2005
Articles
Milestone Group PoV:
Denise Senter-Loyola on Integrating Marketing and Sales Processes
Most organizations take for granted that sales and marketing will be aligned and working together toward common priorities, yet often it simply is not true – evidence of this is abundant throughout the software industry.
Ask any struggling sales organization about a lack of activity and “marketing isn’t delivering the right leads.” Confront marketing about low lead conversion and “sales isn’t following up.”
When organizations get sales and marketing aligned, they typically experience marked improvement in sales productivity very rapidly. The quantity and quality of leads improve, sales cycles are shortened and conversion rates increase.
This was certainly true for Alterian, a UK-based database marketing analytics software provider, whose North American operations struggled for almost 18 months before finally taking off.
Sales and Marketing Integration Applied
“Our marketing team was focused on brand marketing – major tradeshows, advertising – they were successful at gaining recognition, but the vertically-focused sales team was unable to convert leads generated through mass campaigns into real opportunities,” recalls Luke McKeever, EVP of Commercial Operations for Alterian.
When the management team determined to move beyond the sales and marketing ‘blame game’ and get the organization focused on a cohesive strategy, things turned around.
The Alterian team spent four weeks reviewing data from marketing and sales programs, conducting win/loss interviews, and researching market trends. As a result of their analysis, they shifted the focus of sales from targeting five vertical markets directly to selling to one market – Marketing Services Providers – which would serve both as user/customers and the primary channel to the rest of the market.
Demand creation became the number one priority, replacing expensive brand campaigns with highly targeted lead generation. Sales and marketing met diligently every week to review plans and performance. Account management became the job of an integrated team of individuals from sales, marketing and client services, which was responsible for ensuring that client/partners were well-supported in their marketing and lead generation efforts.
“We tightly focused the organization, which was very challenging. Within six months, we were closing sales and reseller partnerships with most of the major Marketing Services Providers. By the end of the year, we were a clear leader in database marketing software for the Marketing Services industry,” says McKeever.
Because Alterian has maintained its commitment to integrated sales and marketing management, they have been able to evolve as their client needs have grown.
If this sort of success is possible, why is it a struggle for most organizations to get sales and marketing integrated?
Keys to Successful Sales and Marketing Integration
The biggest challenge is getting sales and marketing leadership to let go of territorial insecurities and engage in day-to-day integrated management of the end-to-end process. This means moving beyond the surface (e.g., high-level goals communicated at occasional joint sales and marketing meetings) to actively integrating strategy, planning and execution throughout the sales cycle.
After you have achieved alignment at the management level, the process is generally common sense. Many organizations, however, fail to address some of the disciplines required to facilitate successful integration:
Shared access to quality information. Centralize – and prioritize – the technology, processes and disciplines to ensure that everyone has access to current, accurate information about prospects, customers and programs. This can be difficult to accomplish because it requires both technology and clearly defined processes for disseminating and maintaining information. Management must ensure that staff consistently maintains the information. Successful organizations often incorporate maintenance of sales and marketing data as criteria in performance evaluations.
Common priorities and objectives. Move beyond simply establishing general revenue goals. Be specific about the strategies you will employ to achieve those goals and the metrics you will be use to measure success. The key here is to keep the focus narrow. Select the most important priorities that you believe will have the greatest impact on the business and articulate them in terms that are meaningful to both sales and marketing. Fewer, focused objectives results in a more cohesive team and better chances for success.
Clearly defined plans, processes and roles. The entire organization must be clear about not only what needs to be done, but how it will be accomplished, who will be responsible for each step. This means developing detailed program plans and ensuring frequent communication and updates on programs that are being launched or in progress. Take the time to define and document how hand-offs are managed across the team, and how data/information is captured and tracked.
Integrated execution. Ensure that sales and marketing team members are jointly responsible for activities where possible. For example, it should be the shared responsibility of the territory sales rep and the field marketing manager to identify the top targets for a lead generation campaign. Over time, you will map the sales process from preliminary lead generation to close, identifying the actions, tools and team members needed at each step. Integrated sales and marketing teams communicate and collaborate throughout the process to help clients make the buying decision as efficiently as possible.
Disciplined measurement, evaluation and tuning. Track the data and metrics determined when setting objectives and developing plans. This information enables everyone in the organization to understand and improve specific areas where performance objectives are not being met. Make a strong stand about maintaining this as vital information for improvement – avoid the temptation to fall back into the ‘blame game.’
Continuous communication. This is the single most important – and difficult – principle. Establish specific mechanisms for ensuring that the entire organization is kept apprised of objectives, strategies, plans, and performance. This will likely be a combination of tactics: communication meetings; program kick-off and debrief sessions; documents posted for general access; e-mail briefings. It takes work to get the right communication program in place, but the pay off is worth while.
Steps to Achieving Integration
For any organization seeking to achieve integration, here are a few steps to help:
Achieve a single version of the truth. Get the major stakeholders to the table and agree on your company’s biggest sales-related challenges and best market opportunity. Start with a list of hypotheses and questions based on your internal knowledge. Prioritize your information needs and agree regarding what data will be considered sufficiently credible – this is especially important if there is dissention among the team members regarding the key issues being faced. Compile data, conduct research, engage experts, and get to one version of the truth that the management team will get behind and support.
Identify the single most important need in the sales process. Pick the biggest issue prohibiting your organization from achieving sales success. Choose only the most pressing issue – product/marketing alignment, lead generation, higher impact proposals, better tools for product demonstration and testing – the single place where you believe you can make the greatest impact. This will allow your organization to focus, integrate and achieve success in one area, and apply that success across more of the sales process.
Establish a ‘tiger team’. Assign a small group comprising management and staff in sales and marketing to ‘own’ the process of integrating sales and marketing, focusing on the single most important sales issue. Ensure that they address each of key principles thoroughly. Support them and use their processes and tools as the template for extending integration across the sales cycle.
Extend the scope. Get the basics in place via the work of the tiger team; then extend the integration – one priority at a time – enrolling more of the organization as you move forward. If you truly believe that your organization can tolerate sweeping change, then make that decision carefully. Most organizations will realize results rapidly even with only some processes integrated.
Though it requires commitment, discipline and open-mindedness, successfully integrating sales and marketing can help make your organization much more efficient at achieving sales objectives.
Denise Senter-Loyola is a Partner with Milestone Group. She has over 20 years experience in technology marketing, business development and sales, including senior roles at EDS, CSC, Indus International, Accrue and Alterian. Denise may be reached at denise@milestone-group.com. |
