B2B-Why Sales Throws Marketing Under Bus

8/3/2019 B2B-Why Sales Throws Marketing Under Bus

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Why Sales Throws Marketing Under the Bus(and how to avoid fatalities)

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Yep. It’s not at all uncommon for sales and marketing departments to not

get along all that well. Unfortunately, when it comes to profits, the gap

between sales and marketing is no laughing matter.

Marketing and sales alignment is critical to company growth. Businesses

in which marketers report alignment with sales allowing them to jointly

analyse win-loss drivers, measure ROI on lead-generation marketing, and

provide closed-loop sales tracking of lead performance are roughly three

times more likely to outgrow their competitiors.1

Many marketers and salespeople recognise the importance of alignment.

But nonetheless, bridging the gap can be challenging, and when things

go wrong, each department can be tempted to make the other the

scapegoat, throwing them under the proverbial bus. Part of the problem

has to do with the differing mindsets and goals of sales and marketing.

Salespeople are driven by numbers—number of leads, number of

opportunities, number of cold calls and number of follow-up conversations

with hot prospects, quarterly sales totals, and, oh yes, the numbers on

their commission checks.

Marketing, on the other hand, generally looks at the long-

term picture and how it can build brand awarenessand shape industry positioning. Marketers tend

to focus more on long-term goals rather than

quarter-by-quarter objectives, and too often

make decisions on marketplace needs by

conducting focus groups instead of sitting

down with their peers in sales and asking

what they’re seeing.

Compounding the problem is a lack of

process. More than half of sales, marketing

and channel management professionals report

that their companies do not yet have any

formal programs, systems or processes

WHY SALES THROWS MARKETING

UNDER THE BUS(and how to avoid fatalities)

Sales asks: How many marketers does it take to screw in a light bulb?Sales answers: 15.

One to ignore the request from sales for more light,

One to develop a creative brief on why light is important,

Seven to shoot the YouTube video about screwing in light bulbs,

One to evaluate the amount of light offered by competitors and draft a competitive analysis,

Two to create the product slick,

One to determine competitive pricing for the service and set the cost well above that,One to buy a 150-watt bulb for a 60-watt lamp,

And one to put just the right “spin” on the process.

for unifying sales and marketing, and only 12 percent of sales and market-

ing professionals say they have access to a well-integrated, real-time view

of customer interactions.2

In other words, with both marketing and sales working in the dark, the

stage is set for miscommunication and frustration to build. But it doesn’t

have to be that way. While the two departments may differ over short-term

objectives, they have the same overall goal: generating more revenue for

the company. With that in mind, here are seven reasons why sales throwsmarketing under the bus, and more important, what marketing and sales

can do to bridge the gap and avoid fatalities.

Sales Frustration #1:Marketing hands off weak leads.

For salespeople scrambling to hit their numbers, time is money. And it

doesn’t help that a sales rep’s job is becoming harder, as getting appoint-

ments becomes more difficult and it takes more touches to convert sus-

pects to prospects. So nothing is more frustrating to a salesperson than

having marketing deliver weak leads that suck up valuable time that could

be spent pursuing stronger leads. Sales is quick to tell you that the qualityof the leads it pursues has a direct correlation with the business it closes,

and for sales reps, that has a direct impact on the money they make.

Much of the problem lies in marketing and sales having different

definitions of what constitutes a lead. For

example, marketing might consider a

person who downloaded a white paper

to be a lead, while sales labels that

person merely a contact or information

request. Generally, salespeople want

to work prospects that are further

along in the pipeline than merely

showing interest in a topic. They prefer



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to jump in when prospects are at a point where they’re ready to make a buying

decision. And they certainly don’t want to follow up on a supposedly “hot”

lead only to be told, “Actually, I’m not looking to buy anytime soon, I was just

checking out a Webinar.”

Frustration builds when lead generation becomes a numbers game. Mar-

keting rushes to fill the pipeline at the top, with little concern for quality

over quantity, believing sales can sort through the chaff. Marketing feels

it’s fulfilled its responsibility of driving more leads sales’ way, not realising

that unqualified leads become a distracting nuisance to the salesperson.

What to do about it

Incorporating a lead-scoring model into your lead-management process is an

excellent way to bridge the gap between sales and marketing and ensure that

leads are the “right” leads (industry, company size, solution needs, etc.) andready to buy when they reach sales. For starters, sales and marketing should

get together and define terminology. What is a contact? What is a lead? What

is a qualified opportunity? Marketing needs insight from sales as to what

constitutes cool, warm and hot leads—otherwise, it’s a lose/lose scenario.

Why Marketing Sees Sales as Fractious

(and what sales can do about it)Just as sales has gripes with marketing, the reverse is often just as true.

Here are three frustrations marketers have with sales—and what sales can

do to circumvent a stalemate.

1) Sales reps do the Goldilocks routine. When a sales rep is handed

three leads, marketing often thinks the following occurs:

• The first lead is deemed too hard to handle, and so is ignored.

• The second lead is soft on details, and so is put on the back burner.

• The contact at the third prospect firm, which has a lead score lower than

the other two, is where a friend of a friend’s ex-girlfriend used to work, so

the rep thinks that one’s just right and starts dialing.

If sales has a problem with how leads are scored, it needs to take it up

with marketing. Don’t just pick and choose what you’ll work and what

won’t get a second look. Marketing should have sound business reasons

for evaluating when leads are ready to be passed along to sales. Working

with marketing to ensure everyone is on the same pages in terms of what

a good leads looks like is a win-win all around.

2) Sales treats marketing like mushrooms. Yep. Marketing feels like it’s in the

dark when it comes to what happens to leads it passes on to sales. And the

amount of fertiliser sailing through the air whenever marketing asks for reports

on lead status would keep every front lawn in the country green for a century.

Companies using lead management solutions are better able to keep bothsales and marketing informed. But technology only works if used correctly.

Sales reps need to document the results of outreach in the CRM system.

The more light you can shed on how leads are moving through the pipeline,

where they’re getting stalled and where they’re falling through the cracks,

the more insight marketing is getting to better do its job.

3) Sales takes all the credit. Despite the fact that a lead entered the system

first because he clicked on a banner ad created by marketing, downloaded

a white paper developed by marketing, joined a Webinar scheduled by

marketing, reviewed the product brochure written by marketing and

watched the product demo on the company’s Web site—which is owned by

marketing—when the deal is closed, the success belongs to sales. Just sales.

Really. Would it kill you to go pat marketing on the back from time to time?

Maybe even send a couple pizzas its way after a successful quarter? Publicly

recognise marketing’s contribution at company meetings or in the employee

newsletter. Everybody likes a little attention. Marketers are no different.

“The lead-scoring filtering that marketing has done has been

quite beneficial for me and my sales team. It’s alleviated a lot

of the dead wood, and it’s helped us better utilise our time

by focusing on hot leads rather than prospects that aren’t yet

sales-qualified based on our criteria.

”

— Bruce Wisler, marketing vice president of recruiting

and transition, USA Financial

Q. How many sales reps does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A. I can’t believe sales is asking that question. It’s right there

on the product slick we created for them!

When a lead-scoring system is developed with definitions that marketing

and sales have developed in concert, it creates accountability on both

ends. Sales has essentially signed off, saying “We agree, these criteria

and this score would mean these leads are hot. When sales receives these

leads, it’s accountable for acting on them.”

Once the lead-scoring model is in place, there should be scheduled

follow-up. This is a part of the process many companies overlook, but it’s

important because angst can rebuild, especially in tough economic times.

When the sales cycle slows, reps may be more than happy to work lower-

qualified leads. The important thing to remember is that since lead scoring

is an evolving model, follow-up meetings between marketing and sales will

help ensure a smooth-running process.




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Sales Frustration #2:

Marketing doesn’t provide what sales needs to succeed.When it comes to revenue, salespeople know there’s a direct correlation

between the quality and quantity of marketing materials and their ability

to close business. So whether it’s competitive intelligence, the corporate

Web site, product marketing materials or white papers, salespeople get

frustrated when they see marketing failing to deliver the tools they need

when they need them. Or a few days before.

Worst of all, though, is when a salesperson sees something marketing

has produced and says, “I’d never sell it that way.” When the disconnect

between how sales and marketing see the product grows, it can get to the

point where the two seem to be depicting different companies to the pub-

lic. And that can have devastating effects on morale and the bottom line.

What to do about it:

To better provide the assistance sales needs,

marketing should meet regularly with sales-

people to find out what materials, information

and data they need to be successful. Also,

take the time to discuss what they’re seeing

in the marketplace. Who is buying and who is

balking—and why? What points of differentia-tion resonate with prospects, and which fall flat?

Salespeople can be marketing’s eyes and ears in the marketplace.

Use them.

Have follow-up meetings to assess how any revised support initiatives are

working. For example, “Marketing agreed to take the following actions;

here’s what we’ve done; how’s it working?”

When it comes to aligning sales and marketing, both sides play an impor-

tant role. Just as marketing must make an effort to seek out feedback from

sales, sales has an obligation to understand company positioning and key

product features that marketing deems important. Salespeople who have

been pitching a product the same way for five years despite the fact that

both the product and market have undergone dramatic changes need to pay

closer to attention to marketing messaging and adjust their pitch accordingly.

Sales Frustration #3:Marketing doesn’t involve salesin its planning

It’s easy for sales to get frustrated and feel like

marketing’s goals aren’t directly tied to its goals when

it’s not involved in the planning process. If marketing just

merrily moves forward without input from the front lines,

not only will the schism between the two departments

grow, but processes may very well be misaligned with

marketplace needs.

If there’s not communication regarding the company

direction for the upcoming year coupled with the needs,

wants and desires of possible customers, you run the risk

of marketing and sales drifting in different directions and

miss out on the benefits sales input can have on

marketing planning.

What to do about it

Marketing should involve sales in its planning and

strategy sessions. Try meeting with sales teams to

outline messages, themes and advertising for the

quarter ahead. Recognise that in sales, marketinghas a valuable resource it can leverage when

“Our marketing team implemented lead-scoring and lead-

management processes, using criteria—defined with the help of

sales—to better identify highly qualified leads. Those that meet

the criteria are automatically routed to the appropriate sales

division. For those leads that do not meet the criteria, the

marketing team leverages Engage B2B’s lead-nurturing

capabilities. The team is now able to effectively nurture

these leads until they are ready to buy. Our sales depart-

ment is extremely happy with the solution since they now

receive only highly qualified leads in a timely manner.

”

— Bill Shaughnessy, director of online marketing, EDGAR Online.

Communication Breakdown

Improving communication seems like an easy way to bridge the gap

between marketing and sales. So why don’t more companies focus on

this area? Time is one factor—everybody’s too busy doing their own

thing to coordinate a meeting between the two teams. In other cases,

it’s simply a matter of both sides having given up. Marketing perceives

that sales is always providing the same input, while sales thinks, “It

doesn’t matter what input I provide, things never change.” As a result,neither side sees the benefit in interacting.

The first step toward combating this way of thinking is recognising the

time that will be saved by fostering better communication. Whether it’s

discussing how a piece of collateral could have been done better, what

Webinars are on tap for the coming quarter, how the lead-scoring system

can be tweaked or what sort of lead-nurturing campaign would work best,

communication can eliminate wasted time and effort. And if there’s follow-

through on the strategies and steps that are discussed, both sales andmarketing will feel better about investing their time in these pursuits.



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brainstorming strategy ideas. Sales might say, “Have you thought about

marketing something this way, because this is what I’m hearing from the

leads I’m talking to. It’s a big concern out in the field right now, so is there

any way to work a campaign focused on this area into our marketing

calendar for the third or fourth quarter?”

When consulting sales in the planning process, get a range of opinions,

and remember that sales managers are sometimes more open to provid-

ing insights than the best salespeople, who may not have time or want to

give away their ideas. Also, remember that sales regions can be shaped

by a local manager’s approach, so pull a geographically diverse set of

salespeople for these planning and strategy sessions.

Sales Frustration #4:Marketing doesn’t work to—or know how to—

move leads down the pipeline.There’s nothing more frustrating than to have a prospect show interest in

a product months before he or she’s ready to buy, only to do a deal with a

competitor when the time is right. Now more than ever, leads must be gath-

ered and nurtured and not allowed to slip through the cracks. A good lead-

nurturing program is critical to sales’ success. So it’s no surprise that sales

can get frustrated when marketing fails to nurture leads until they express

some level of interest. Other issues of frequent concern to sales include:

• Marketing takes too much time getting leaded entered into the

CRM system.

• Marketing sends out lead-warming messages to prospects filled

with “marketing speak” even though the signatures are sales reps’.• Marketing fails to quickly let sales know when a prospect

becomes hot.


Again, the smart play is for marketing to discuss lead nurturing with

sales, perhaps in conjunction with a meeting on lead scoring. Who goes

into a nurture campaign? If you call someone a contact, how do you get

them to become a lead? Is it three campaigns and two emails? Would

an inside sales team help the process, and if so exactly what would its

responsibilities be? And what happens if a prospect needs to be removed

from a nurture campaign?

In addition to discussing the specifics of nurturing a contact from first

touch to hot lead, it’s smart to get feedback from sales in the creation of

“We’ll send out a nurture campaign, and sales will get emailsback from people saying, ‘Wow, this is a great white paper, can

we set up something next week?’ Sales will forward it back to

us in the marketing department and say, ‘Thanks so much for

doing this for us.’ It’s been really positive, and sales has had a

lot more quality leads coming in.

”

— Kimi Fowler, marketing systems manager,

The Sant Corporation

communications for a lead-nurturing campaign. Will the type of messaging

you’re using in these correspondences align with how sales will communi-

cate with a prospect? Using dynamic content to give a more personalisedsales touch can help.

Also, communicating with sales regarding a timeline for leads can help

create an internal closed-loop process. For example, discuss how quickly

trade show leads will appear in the system, and how they’ll be nurtured.

This way, sales doesn’t get frustrated because it thought it would be able

to follow up on a hot trade show lead the day after a show.

When a lead does move from warm to hot, marketing should use multiple

forms of communication to convey the opportunity, such as sending a

sales alert to the rep’s email inbox, a sales notification to the CRM system,

or a direct push to the individual sales rep’s lead queue.

Putting this type of qualification system in place, with known nomenclature and

a carefully defined process, is likely to encourage salespeople to act quickly

How Marketing Automation Helps Close the Gap

Whether it’s lead scoring, lead nurturing or increased visibility into market-

ing and sales activities, marketing automation is critical for closing the gap

between sales and marketing. Instead of a manual process that’s time-con-

suming and subject to human error, marketing automation solutions enable

you to create sophisticated and engaging campaigns that automaticallyrespond to customer/prospect behaviours, lifecycle segments and other

criteria. They also give sales more visibility into prospects’ historical and real-

time Web activity. And by forcing you to set rules to put a lead-management

process into place, marketing automation encourages discussion between

the departments. The result is decreased tensions between salespeople and

marketers and less finger-pointing about one side not producing enoughleads and the other side not closing enough deals.




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and confidently when a hot lead crosses their desk. Conversely, a lead-nurtur-

ing campaign won’t work to its full potential if sales doesn’t use it, a scenario

that can be frustrating for marketers. If marketing builds a lead-nurture cam-

paign based on sales’ input, it’s important for sales to accept the responsibility

of putting prospects into the campaign and utilising it as it’s been designed.

Sales Frustration #5:Marketing doesn’t know the customer.

Sometimes marketing and sales have a different idea of who their customers

are. And more tellingly, they’re not on the same page regarding who their ideal

customer is. Without agreement in this area, it’s tough to figure out who mar-

keting should be targeting. And this disconnect compounds the feeling among

salespeople that marketing doesn’t understand how difficult their job is, from

cold-calling on prospects to being immersed in a competitive pitch situation.


To get to know customers and prospects better, marketing should consider

going on sales calls or “ride-alongs.” With today’s technology, another

option is for a marketing manager to regularly join sales calls remotely,

allowing him or her to listen in inconspicuously.

A related idea is to start a “customer interview

process” in which marketing goes into the field

once or twice a year—or more—to speak with

customers and see how they’re feeling about

the product and their business.

For more established or larger companies, itmay be preferable to look at trends within

the customer database. Who are the hap-

piest customers? Depending on the prod-

uct or service being sold, which customers

are using it to its fullest potential and/or getting

the most out of it? To round out the picture, ask sales, perhaps on a quarterly

basis, what they’re hearing in the field. What are some top concerns, and what

approaches seem to be resonating with prospects?

Sales Frustration #6:Marketing doesn’t measure the right data.

For a salesperson, there’s nowhere to hide if your performance isn’t up to

par—either you hit your numbers or you didn’t. And this harsh reality cre-

ates a strong sense of urgency. Marketing traditionally hasn’t had that kind

of accountability, and compounding the problem is that some of the metrics

it measures, such as information requests or price per lead, are viewed by

sales as irrelevant.

Generalised marketing reports—for example, “We’ve generated 172 hits in

the press resulting in 100K impressions” or “We tallied 50,000 hits on ourWeb site”—don’t resonate with salespeople. They need to know specifi-

cally how these efforts bring in leads. Of course, there are salespeople who

recognise that in some cases it’s the brand itself that creates the need to

visit the company Web site or stop by its booth at a trade show, but it’s

difficult to quantify this impact.


Marketing can help bridge the gap by making its reports as specific as possible.

If marketing can say, “We generated 20,000 contacts, 1,000 became

leads, 400 got qualified and 50 became buyers,” not only will sales better

understand the value you bring, those in the c-suite will, too.

Which leads and sources of advertising are drawing the most revenue? If

marketing ran a Google search campaign and a Yahoo banner ad, which

is performing better—not based on the net number of requests, but the

new revenue generated?

In addition, organisations should consider evaluating

the marketing team based on metrics such as sales-

qualified leads generated. That kind of mutual stake

in sales’ success is almost guaranteed to build trust

between the departments.

Sales Frustration #7:Marketing doesn’t providetransparency.

When salespeople are about to pick up the

phone and call a prospect, they can either go in

“

Now that we have put structure around how to identify quality

leads, we can segment those leads by the information

gathered during the lead-qualification process. Sales

only acts on qualified leads sent to them via the

Salesforce.com integration, which is saving both timeand valuable resources.

”

— Bob Gallagher, vice president of marketing,

WorkForce Software.

Corollary Frustration for Marketing: Sales sells products to the wrong people

No product can be the answer to all prospects. Some deals are better

to walk away from, but that’s not always easy for a sales rep to do.

Marketing should be knowledgeable about the product, its uses and

the clients and situations it’s most appropriate for. That information needs

to be communicated to sales to ensure the company is serving the right

target audience.




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blindly, or have an informed conversation that ties them to the prospect

and makes the prospect more willing to talk with them. To achieve the

latter, they need answers to question such as:

• “What communications were sent to this prospect?”

• “How frequently were they sent?”

• “What was the prospect’s response?”

• “Which search terms brought this prospect to our site?”

• “What has the prospect been viewing on our site?”

Based on the fact that less than 40 percent of marketing and salespeople

report “good” visibility into prospects, pipeline, deal flow and conversion

rates2, most salespeople don’t have access to these answers. If they don’t

know what marketing has done to garner leads, they’ll be in the unfortu-

nate situation of groping through the conversation. And that decreases the

likelihood of engaging a prospect.

Finally, a lack of visibility can obscure the work marketing is doing for sales.

Instead of receiving credit for helping move a prospect through the pipeline,

a perception of “What has marketing done for me lately?” creeps in.


Having a CRM system—which most salespeople are comfortable with—

integrated with a marketing automation solution is an excellent way to

achieve the transparency that salespeople crave. For starters, visibility

into lead scores (and their fluctuations) gives sales real-time access

to when prospects are highly active and engaged. The integration also

allows marketing to speak in specific terms—on W day, X prospectreceived Y communication and visited Z Web page. Having this visibility

into marketing actions helps ensure that when sales makes contact

with a prospect, it has the information it needs to connect strongly. And

this transparency has the added benefit of reminding sales of the work

marketing is doing on its behalf.

Conclusion

Marketing and sales look at the world through different lenses, and that’s

not likely to change, even as new business trends and technologies

emerge. But despite the differences between the departments, there’s

no reason the two can’t work harmoniously and leverage one another’s

strengths. In fact, by taking a few simple steps to align marketing and

sales, companies can reap significant profits.

Businesses with mature lead-management systems see sales acting on

more leads, a decrease in follow-up time for sales leads, and higher close

rates for marketing-generated leads.3 And organisations that combinemarketing automation with a marketing process driven by sales-marketing

alignment, lead definition and lead handoff will see revenue growth four

to five times as large as companies with no marketing automation or with

automation but no proper process or sales-marketing alignment.4

Keep that in mind next time you hear someone cracking wise about the

differences between sales and marketing. By taking a few steps to bridge

the gap, you’ll make sure the joke is on your competitors.

Footnotes

1-Marketing Profs, “B-to-B Lead Generation: Marketing ROI& Performance Evaluation Study,” 2008.

2-CMO Council, “Closing the Gap: The Sales & Marketing Alignment

Imperative,” 2008.

3-Forrester, “CMOs Need to Initiate Marketing-Sales Collaboration,”

June ’08.

4-SiriusDecisions Research Brief, “Calculating the Return on Marketing

Automation,” 2008.

Q. How many sales reps and marketers does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A. Thirty-four if they don’t get along, and then they’ll likely break the bulb.

One of each if they communicate well with each other.

“From my sales perspective, it’s helpful that Engage B2B enables

me to see what communications prospects have been sent, what

they’ve opened and what their activity is. If we’ve been ‘dripping’

on someone and there’s been no activity for two months, it’s nice

to know that’s somebody I probably don’t need to waste my time

on. If, on the other hand, a prospect has received a few different

correspondences and clicked on numerous things, I can tailor my

conversation based on what they’ve done.

”

— Bruce Wisler, marketing vice president

of recruiting and transition, USA Financial

Documents

B2B-Why Sales Throws Marketing Under Bus