A Wake Up Call for Marketers – Become More Relevant to Sales
At a time in the economic cycle when lead generation and sales enablement is most needed, when Marketers should be rethinking every investment they make and how it helps their company increase sales, a new and important study by the CMO Council comes out reporting that less than 20% of respondents say their Sales and Marketing organizations are extremely collaborative. (Read the report here)
And it gets worse:
• Most respondents felt Sales and Marketing had only “intermittent relations and interactions”
• 20% of respondents indicate that Marketing hands off leads to Sales, yet Marketing “has no insight into conversion and close outcomes”
• 13% say most leads are never captured, qualified or acted upon
And how do they see each other? Clearly, there is room for improvement in the Sales and Marketing relations area:
• When Marketers were asked how they viewed Sales, 40% said they had “some top producers but there was mostly a need for improvement”
• Sales professionals, on the other hand, tend to have a tactical view of Marketing, with only 10% seeing Marketers as “market-savvy and on-target with demand-generating campaigns”
But there is hope (I am an eternal optimist): Respondents actually agreed on the top three measures of sales performance and productivity — and these are areas which would benefit by a deeper alignment and integration between Sales and Marketing:
1. Lead quality and ROI
2. Conversion and close rates
3. Level of action on opportunities
As Todd Ebert blogs today – “the pit crew (Marketing) and the driver (Sales) must work seamlessly as one unit in order to get around the track faster than the other teams”.
So, at a time when Sales needs Marketing the most, the opportunity for Marketing to become relevant arises. Grab it!
ATTENTION LinkedIn MEMBERS:
To help B-to-B Marketers become more relevant to Sales by generating more and better leads while reducing their cost per lead, we have started a LinkedIn Group: the B2B Conversion Optimization Network. Feel free to join – and to pass along an invite to colleagues.
