Totally Aligned Sales and Marketing Teams Accelerate Revenue Growth

Growing revenue is the life line of any successful business unfortunately in most companies, sales and marketing organizations are viewed separately as:

• sales = revenue creator
• marketing = cost center that is not vital to the revenue creation process

This antiquated way of thinking has created many inefficiencies in the revenue generation cycle and is preventing companies from maximizing revenue growth. Today, digital marketing, social media tools, automation software and one to one messaging have created great opportunities for organizations to rethink their go to market strategy, better align measurement of marketing initiatives and overall transform the way marketing and sales teams are aligned. Some tactics to begin:

1. Manage the marketing department more as a true revenue-generating organization with responsibilities further down the funnel such as outbound calling, lead qualification etc
2. Embrace the fact that revenue creation starts when a company first meets a prospective buyer and continues through deal close and onward to continuous customer loyalty
3. Implement a systematic process that nurtures prospects forward through every part of the revenue cycle and measures buyer engagement at every step of the process
4. Provide sales teams with the real time information and tools they need to help prioritize their time to engage with qualified prospects only when they are ready to commit 
5. Measure the effectiveness and ROI of spending on people and programs at every step of the revenue cycle across both marketing and sales 

By changing corporate perceptions of marketing, improving processes, better aligning metrics and creating a sales and marketing team environment; companies will realize faster revenue growth plus better utilize all of an organizations resources.

Make it a great day... e

e-Nuggets

• "Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results."-- Andrew Carnegie 
• "The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it."-- Theodore Roosevelt 
• "Trust men [women] and they will be true to you; treat them greatly, and they will show themselves great."--Ralph Waldo Emerson 
• "Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success."--Henry Ford

Marketeers Must Drive Revenue...and Be able to Prove it !

Today more than ever, marketers must be able to communicate to the executive team ie CXOs and VP  in terms of the overall impact marketing is having on the company’s revenue, cash, profit, and growth.

One way this is being done by successful sales and marketing teams is via joint reporting on a specific dashboards with metrics that the CEO and CFO care about. While typical marketing metrics like number of leads collected at trade shows, twitter followers, or webinar attendees are important to track for program management and enhancement, those metrics lack relevance at the executive level.

For marketing professionals to get a seat at the big table they must incorporate the use of "executive speak" in their discussions by thinking "opportunities" rather than "leads" and "investment" instead of "cost" and "buying cycle" versus "singe event". It's no different from what we marketeers do everyday and that is understanding our audience and then messaging correctly to close the information gap between their need/pain point and our offerings.

Have a great day
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I also recommend an excellent article on this subject by Phil Fernandez, President & CEO of Marketo http://t.co/hO1jwiZw