Next patient? Sales and Marketing.

Sales and marketing misalignment. The term itself brings me out in shivers. Because of the mass of leads that falls between the gaps? Because of trillions of wasted dollars the issue causes? Because of the horrendous terminology? Maybe all three. Mainly the latter.

But as hideous as the term is and as little as it rolls off the tongue, it is an issue which is causing anguish to many businesses in the tech sector and desperately needs addressing.

Sales and marketing working together is a key component in the success of most organisations, specifically those who place an emphasis on account based marketing. However, if it is so critical, why is misalignment between the two departments such a prolific industry-wide issue? Surely businesses should be doing everything possible to address the fractured relationship between sales and marketing? Why is sales and marketing alignment so hard to achieve?

In our last ebook, “The Case of the Broken Buyers’ Journey”, we looked at how an oversimplified journey model – and its accomplice, content marketing – helped murder your B2B tech leads. People are now buying things differently and as marketing practices move into a more refined, personalised and targeted space buying journey process needed redefining. So our investigation resulted in a proposed change to the way we view the buyers’ journey and helped us better understand the complex reality of today’s tech buying process (If you haven’t already, download your copy here). However, as important as optimising your buyer’s journey is, if operationally, ‘process’ is at the heart of your sales and marketing activities, your business will never be truly customer centric. If you as a business are putting the work in to reforming your prospects’ buying journey, then you may also need to address the systematic issues in your business which will continue to allow leads to fall through the gaps between sales and marketing.

According to Marketingsherpa, 61% of B2B marketeers send all leads directly to sales; however, only 27% of those leads are qualified. Handing leads over to sales when they haven‘t reached the ‘purchase’ stretch of their journey is presumptive. On the other hand, Gartner reports that up to 70% of sales leads are not properly leveraged or are completely ignored, thus wasting marketing programme dollars. See the disconnect?

We all know there are problems and many businesses are addressing symptomatic issues by putting band aids over arterial wounds. Aligning two independent mechanisms that operate differently and separately, is near impossible. We have previously talked about Blended sales and marketing, but this still puts the outbound process at the heart of the company’s strategy. Sales and marketing will never be aligned until we stop trying to market and sell to people. Your prospects don’t see themselves as numbers and acronyms, so neither should you. By creating a more customer centric process, rather just customer centric messaging we create a more aligned strategy which promotes customer experience. And from that organisational shift, foundations will be better laid for an integrated sales and marketing strategy.

So in our latest ebook, "A Diagnosis: Sales and Marketing Misalignment", we have brought the sales and marketing teams in to the Sherpa clinic; analysed the symptoms and have prescribed a course of treatment that could cure Sales and Marketing misalignment once and for all.

Download it now to find out how you can Adjust to a customer centric process and align your sales and marketing teams to create a strategy for success.

If you would like to discuss how Sherpa can transform your marketing, please get in touch…

via email on letschat@sherpamarketing.co.uk
by giving us a call on 01234 964000.
or by clicking here.

Sherpa have recently been shortlisted for a B2B Marketing Award for Best Channel Marketing Initiative, and do you know what they labelled us? Trailblazers…Whatdya know?! How’s that for serendipity!)