31.4
39.7
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I often find myself in conflict with sales
%
33.7
Chief sales, marketing and communications officer, Expo City Dubai
Sholto Douglas-Home
Marketers should always be sensitive to the fact that those who don’t live and breathe marketing will not always understand how we refer to things, but there’s nothing more powerful than facts and figures to put marketing in a stronger position. The access to really powerful proof points of marketing performance data should give us the wherewithal to bring sales along with us.
Former CMO,
RS Group
Jon White
Marketing is great at painting future pictures. So, paint a picture of what could be achieved and take the emotion out of it. Take the parochialism out of it. Don’t make it about the silos of function.
Director of marketing, M3ter
Kelly Singsank
You can’t just have marketing working on something and passing it over the fence to sales, because that’s not how a buyer buys anymore. The days of an inbound lead that gets passed to sales and job done are coming to an end.
10. Cracking the sales alignment challenge
Despite being cited as the most important relationship for B2B marketers, conflict, confusion and a lack of appreciation is putting strain on the bond with sales.
Over half (59.4%) of the total State of B2B sample say the chief sales officer/head of sales is their most important relationship, over and above the CEO and CFO. However, this relationship is not without its tensions.
A third of marketers say they are often in conflict with their sales colleagues. When asked why, the reasons vary from sales not understanding the priorities of the marketing team to seeing their work as a cost rather than an investment. Some B2B marketers believe sales think marketing is only focused on lead generation and therefore there to serve sales.
The perception of marketing ‘serving’ sales is often set from the top and whether the CEO chooses to elevate marketing to the C-suite.
In some B2B businesses, it is fair to say sales has traditionally dominated. However, as the needs of the buyer change amid the rise of new technology, this dynamic is being redefined. B2B customers are, for example, becoming more sophisticated in the way they expect to interact with brands, meaning marketing is being given the freedom to manage the multichannel experience, rather than simply support sales.
• Embrace the healthy tension and take emotion out of the conversation whenever there is conflict. Marketers are advised to get closer to their sales peers and ask questions, ensuring they don’t fall back on jargon which can create division. Bringing data to the table helps the marketing team demonstrate they can speak in the same language as sales.
46.3
%
43.3
%
The sales team do not understand the priorities of the marketing team
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My business believes marketing is there to serve sales
Lessons
%
The sales team think marketing is only about lead generation
%
The sales team think they could do the job of marketing better than the marketers
%
The sales team see marketing as a cost rather than an investment
• Instead of sales requesting things from the marketing team, the relationship should be reframed as a strategic conversation. The teams should work hard to evolve together in a bid to become more strategic, rather than go in different directions and risk silos emerging. It could help to shift from a conversation about ‘sales and marketing’ to a ‘go-to-market approach’, which has a common purpose.
• The customer journey is becoming more sophisticated and complicated, meaning the focus should be on marketing and sales working closely together to deliver quality leads and convert, rather than worry about individual teams taking credit.
Marketers on aligning with sales