Do you have a service level agreement (SLA) between your sales and marketing groups? If your answer is no – read this blog. If your answer is yes – read this blog.
This blog is not about why you need an SLA, just Google that (or read my other blogs) and you'll find a ton of reasons why. It's about how you actually create one.
Try doing a Google search to find samples of a sales and marketing SLA. Wait, don’t do that. Let me save you some time - you'll find very little if any usable information. If you find any samples at all, they are most likely focused on only lead response or key KPI deliverables between both teams.
There are five must haves that need to be in any sales and marketing SLA:
· Executive Summary
· Communication Plan
· Terminology
· Marketing Accountabilities
· Sales Accountabilities
Let’s quickly review each one.
Executive summary – answer the following question: Why are we doing this? And answer it in a way that it will be clear to your entire executive team.
Communication plan – should include agreements around regular meetings, topics that will be covered in those meetings, key KPIs that will be reviewed and conflict resolution steps to name a few.
Terminology – agree on all key terms – specifically: marketing responder, sales accepted lead, sales qualified lead, qualified lead criteria, BANT and any other terms that need to be clear between each group.
Marketing accountabilities – this is more than just how many leads the marketing team is going to deliver. How about covering: percentage of closed revenue, reporting on win/loss, scoring the quality of your leads, maintaining a minimum quality threshold and alignment of marketing assets to your sales cycle.
Sales accountabilities – you surely want to ensure that sales reps are responding to leads in a timely manner. You also should consider including items such as: data fields that are mandatory to be completed in your CRM, win/loss reviews, minimum close ratios of marketing generated opportunities and closed loop feedback on lead quality issues.
Your SLA should be no longer than five PowerPoint slides. Keep it clear, concise and as simple as possible. There should be a signature page as well. Make sure both your sales and marketing executives actually sign the document.
Here’s to better alignment in 2011!!!!
