Several weeks ago I co-facilitated a sales and marketing SLA (service level agreement) workshop with a multi-billion dollar technology company. It was part of an integrated solution Richardson is delivering to help the organization transform how they sell to their clients.
I can’t discuss the details of the engagement, but what I would like to comment on is how “people” make all the difference in aligning sales and marketing. What made this particular client unique is how their revenue team – sales and marketing – interacted with one another. In the workshop were global marketing and sales leaders who had responsibility for key business units and geographies. From the moment the event kicked off, the incredible high level of respect for each other and desire to collaborate was evident from one participant to the other. The egos were checked at the door. Everyone in the room was ready to roll up their sleeves and accomplish something many large organizations can only dream of – a working sales and marketing SLA.
In my experience, having a team this ready and open to collaboration is not normal – but best practice. Kudos goes to the executive leadership team for setting the expectations and to the senior project manager for ensuring that all participants fully understood their role, responsibility and accountability during the workshop. What a great group of people and some of the best I’ve had the pleasure to work with.
Much is written about how to align sales and marketing. Let me sum a lot of it up for you – just go out and buy a few marketing automation tools, build in lead scoring models, create some playbooks, hook it all together, make it accessible and bang, you got yourself alignment. Not so fast.
Very little is written about the “people” part of alignment. Yep, your ability to work with others. To be collaborative, respectful, honest and to be truly open to helping one another. Easy said, but very, very hard to do. Why’s that? Because you are dealing with attitudes, egos, hidden (or maybe not hidden) agendas, peer relationships and the “protecting ones territory” situations. If I can point to anything that tops the list of alignment killers, it’s the people.
How does a company overcome this issue? It starts with leadership. A sound relationship between your CSO and your CMO. If they can’t get along, then you are doomed to failure from the get go. How do you fix that? The CEO gets them help to correct their relationship issues. If that does not work, then the CEO needs to look to replace that executive who is unwilling to get along.
With solid leadership behavior, executives drive that behavior to their teams and they hold everyone accountable for doing the same. Having people ready and willing to work together, along with marketing automation tools, best practice lead management, process and training, you will have a recipe for successful sales and marketing alignment.
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