At TMSA’s Annual Conference last month, I had the pleasure of hosting a discussion group of sales and marketing practitioners on the topic of “Leveraging Sales Feedback with Marketing to Drive Results.” At first, I was fearful that it might evolve into more of the same old ‘sales wants more leads from marketing’ type of discussion. However, I was delightfully surprised at the level of interest in collaboration and openness across both functions sitting around the table! I was also surprised that the same challenges were present across multiple participating companies.
Key questions we endeavored to answer, and you can do the same within your organization, are:
- Do Salespeople and Marketers meet regularly to review programs, goals and progress? Monthly, quarterly, weekly?
- Do Salespeople and Marketers have a common view & understanding of what the “Ideal Customer” looks like? (ie. think: ‘what’s the perfect lead?’ and answer that question the same way….)
- Does Marketing have a formal method for seeing the leads that sales accepts and converts? (ie. think: marketing automation linked to CRM)
- Does Sales have a process to formally document/give marketing feedback on why certain leads are not accepted/converted?
- Do Salespeople and Marketers share common goals (ie. tied to revenue)? Are they both pulling in the same direction to hit the same number?
- Is the Sales organization and the Marketing organization sharing in the output and designing their initiatives based on a “Single Source of Truth”, the “Truth” being the Customer (or Voice of Customer programs)?
Suffice to say that there were a lot of “No’s” to these questions around the table. And for the few ‘Yes’s’ that were present, it was a “Yes, well…. Sort Of”! It became abundantly clear that if both sales and marketing are successful in centering on a common view and definition of what creates a great customer experience, and they have the mechanisms for getting feedback to each other accordingly, there is no doubt great business results will follow.
By Jill Schmieg, Founder & Chief Strategist at Sol de Naples Marketing, a B2B marketing services firm specializing in strategy, communications, demand generation, marketing automation and ROI. Prior to her current role at Sol, Jill has held positions of Senior Director of Marketing, Supply Chain Solutions, and Senior Director of Brand Strategy & Communications at Ryder, a Fortune 500 leader in transportation and logistics. In addition to serving as Co-Chairperson of TMSA’s Education Committee, Jill has led the strategic launch of TMSA’s first-ever Sales Advisory Council and Sales Training Workshop and was also recognized as the first-ever TMSA Volunteer of the Year in 2011. Jill holds an B.B.A in International Business and a B.A. in Spanish from Eastern Michigan University. Today, she actively works with B2B firms of all sizes, helping them build unconventional, savvy and focused ways to reach their markets. Learn more at www.soldenaples.com.