Sales and Marketing Alignment Begins with the Customer – Forbes

This is an outstanding article on the relationship of Sales and Marketing in today’s time:

Increased pressure and turnover creates more tension between the two departments. Sales blames marketing for their coworkers being let go. Marketing’s budget eliminates important branding activities and all their resources become focused on demand generation in an effort to avoid blame by sales. Both departments view success through the prism of how to cover their derrières and stay employed. …

Leads, closed deals, process, incentives and hand-offs are all internal metrics of running a business; it is the buyer who decides when they (the lead) turn into revenue. While sales and marketing squabble, the customer becomes increasingly unhappy with their sales interactions which are considered unproductive 97 percent of the time.

via Sales and Marketing Alignment Begins with the Customer – Forbes.

Sounds familiar to you? The sales cycle (and the marketing cycle) have changed with a new behavior of an empowered customer, who is well-informed through the web, through social channels and peer recommendations.

Today 80% of B2B purchase cycles are completed before the buyer considers contacting the vendor and, even then, they are loath to do so. Sales may feel their role is to sell the product, but New Business Strategies’ research consistently shows that buyers prioritize relationships and trust over product and price.

Over the last decade, buyers have unprecedented access to independent reviews, peers, analyst and independent sources of information. As a result, sales no longer chaperones buyers through their purchasing process, but buyers instead go through a self-directed process the vendor can enable. Buyers are contacting sales to establish a relationship, test their chemistry and see if they can trust the vendor.

Want to align marketing and sales? Align them both with the customer.

via Sales and Marketing Alignment Begins with the Customer – Forbes.

And where is in my opinion the role of Marketing? We need to influence. we need to dominate the Word of Mouth-Marketing demonstrating and proofing the competency of our company and our offerings. This is, where Marketing helps Sales to win a customer.

Word-of-mouth marketing (WOMM, WOM marketing), also called word of mouth advertising, is an unpaid form of promotion—oral or written[1]—in which satisfied customers tell other people how much they like a business, product, service, or event.

via Word-of-mouth marketing – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.