Misalignment of sales and marketing in costs much more than leaders in transportation and logistics think. According to Jeff Davis, keynote of the TMSA Digital Transformation Conference in Chicago this last Tuesday, it’s estimated that lost sales productivity and wasted marketing budget cost companies at least $1 trillion each year.
Davis also threw out some additional related statistics that demonstrate a significant loss of productivity and expense due to misunderstanding and misalignment. For example, sales reps spend only 36.6% of their time on selling, according to InsideSales.com. In addition, sales reps ignore 80% of marketing-generated leads, according to Marketo and Reachforce.
Most sales leaders would agree that time is a sales representative’s most valuable asset. Yet, the environment in which leaders ask salespeople to operate robs them of time and a primary reason many struggle to hit quote. Interestingly, 32% of salespeople in transportation achieved less than 50% of their established quota, according to last year’s TMSA Marketing & Sales Metrics Study. While some chalk this up to unrealistic quote expectations or poor sales training, many see misalignment between sales and marketing (and Marketing’s misunderstanding of Sales’ needs) as being primary drivers of this performance failure.
So what can be done to align sales and marketing in a transportation and logistics company? According to Davis, focus on these three critical as:
Working Across Silos. Leaders should fight the silo mentality, which reduces the efficiency of achieving growth, morale, trust, collaboration, and company culture. Leaders should shift from “me” to “we” so each employee embraces being a part of one revenue-producing team.
CX is Everything. When Davis spoke at the TMSA Logistics Marketing & Sales Conference last June near Jacksonville, Florida, he said by 2020 the Customer Experience (CX) will be more important to customers than price or product. Unfortunately it’s impossible to provide a positive and seamless CX if teams are not aligned. A focus on CX and integrated teams ultimately will strengthen a customer’s experience.
Communication Avoids Duplication. Silos can create an environment where team efforts are unnecessarily duplicated. It lends itself to an inefficient use of time and energy, and is costly to the company and demoralizing to employees.
