Report: Sales and Marketing Must Learn To Work Together

Knocking down the silos, integrating marketing and sales to align their efforts to boost both consumer and franchise marketing results, is a hot topic these days. A new report from Marketo and ReachForce examines the traditional split between sales and marketing - and what companies can do to bring these two critical functions together for the overall good of the brand. While the report focuses on B2B, the idea - and critical importance - of aligning sales and marketing applies to franchise consumer marketing as well.

This report, volume four of "The B2B Lead" series is titled Marketing and Sales Alignment: Playing on the same team to generate leads and drive revenue. The 16-page report, filled with both analysis of and tips for overcoming this historic organizational gap, is divided into 10 concise sections:

1. Here's Why Marketing and Sales Can't Get Along
2. What is Marketing's #1 Job?
3. Practical Strategies to Building Sales-Marketing Alignment
4. Defining a Lead
5. Marketing Metrics to Drive Sales
6. Using Sales Wins Analysis for Focused Lead Generation
7. Use Lead Scoring to Identify Sales-Ready Leads
8. Using Surveys for Lead Scoring
9. Easy To Take Lead Scoring Surveys Help Drive High Response Rates
10. The Integrated Revenue Cycle: A New Model for Sales and Marketing

The following edited excerpts from the report provide a quick look at some of the contents:

From the introduction:

"Marketing and sales are on the same team, right? Then why does it seem that they just cannot get along? With the latest sales force and marketing automation technologies, the communication gap between sales and marketing should be closing. When marketing and sales teams are aligned to the same goals, communication opens, the number of quality leads increases, and ultimately revenue goes up."

From Section 1, "Here's Why Marketing and Sales Can't Get Along":

"The gap between marketing and sales teams has been around since the two functions were created and is usually just accepted as an irreparable inconvenience in many busi­nesses. Sales thinks only they are worried about the quarter; marketing thinks they are the only ones who think strategically. Sales wonders why they have to generate all their own leads; marketing complains that sales ignores or criticizes everything they generate. Sales thinks marketing is lightweight and easy; marketing thinks salespeople will say anything to get a deal.

"It is time for this fighting to stop. As the spread of the Internet and social media transforms the B2B buying process, aligning the warring departments has never been more critical to driving revenue and growth. And stopping the fighting begins by understanding the real and significant differences between the two functions."

What to do about it?

According to the report, "The key to closing the gap between marketing and sales is not to slam the two groups into one function under one leader, as some pundits advise. And it's not to force marketers to behave more like salespeople, with aggressive quotas and huge variable compensation. Instead, the answer is to recognize that marketing and sales bring different strengths to the revenue process, and to find ways to get the best out of each function in a coordinated, efficient process."

While this may seem overly general, the report drills down to specific recommendations and tips to close the gap and help your sales and marketing departments to work better together.

Click here for a copy of the full report.