Aligning marketing and sales

Aligning two disciplines that are lead by different leaders is a real challenge. Often, the marketing team does not find it necessary to involve sales and vice versa.

Recently, I organized a major debrief of some key consumer insights to a local marketing team. I requested that the sales management need to be present as well. Both teams enjoyed the deeper insights and gained further understanding. Later the General Manager commented that he did not see the purpose of why sales needed to be there. Well, if you are a company selling consumer goods (and this was the case) then it is for me an easy win to give sales the access to the reasons why consumers buy or feel a certain way about their products. I think they are clever enough to translate the right meaning to their customers.

Here are some tips that might help you:

1. How often does the senior marketing and sales leaders come together to discuss how to improve the commercial approach?
- Often these two teams come oficially together for the annual planning session. Here a sequencial approach works well. First 2-day session is an information exchange where both disciplines provide their pov on opportunities to capture for next year and assessment of performance with key learnings of previous year.

- In addition team members of both parties should be part of ad-hoc meetings. This should become a structured approach, where it is clear to all parties when they should be part of each others activities.

Herewith some thinking on marketing and sales departmental meetings.
Invite key sales reps into marketing brainstorming sessions and/or department meetings. Ask them what’s going on up on the frontline, and what they need from marketing to help develop, maintain, and close business opportunities. Let the marketing department show current project ideas, and get direct feedback.
In return, the sales department should open its meetings to marketing so that this group hears about the day-to-day experiences, what customers expect, and how the products and services are performing. This information will be used to develop campaign concepts and messages, as well as call-to-action strategies. It can also ensure that all potential markets are being reached and addressed with appropriate messages.