One way to drive additional synergy between your marketing and sales investments, is to clearly map your sales process with your prospecting activities and supporting marketing tools and resources.
Typically companies do a good job of mapping out a defined sales process, with key "gates" that opportunities must move through from entering the sales funnel to coming out the other end as a new client. Against this process sales teams usually understand what prospecting activities they must execute to build the sales pipeline. Finally, marketing also usually has a strategic marketing plan or framework against which tactical programs are executed.
However, bringing these three streams together -- sales process, prospecting activities and marketing resources and tools -- is not an area where many companies excel. I believe marketing needs to take the lead in getting these points of integration to happen. While this leadership can come from marketing or sales, to ensure the marketing investment (read "cost center") is most effective with demonstrated ROI and programs that sales supports, marketing has the most to gain to ensure this integration happens.
This example is from a company where we had a successful partnership between marketing and sales with a collaborative approach to integrating the marketing output with the sales process and activities.
During this time of year as you're planning your 2010 marketing approach and activities, sit down with your sales counterparts to map out a plan that ensures you're in sync.
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