End the Feud - Build Sales and Marketing Partners

Marketing Automation: Demand Generation for the Salesperson

The most critical success factor to building a demand generation practice with big revenue impact is the alignment marketing has with sales.

We work with many marketing organizations and, hands down, the most successful are those who have a close alignment with sales. There are many ways for marketing to involve sales in sourcing, selecting, and implementing a marketing automation (MA) system. Two key points to remember:

Get sales involved early in the process. Ask for input from sales on how the tool can be most effective for them. Enlist their help to map out your company's buying process - who your buyers are, what they are buying, why and how they are buying.  Define your revenue goals and go-to-market strategy together. Create Service Level Agreements (SLAs) to describe the lead follow up process, agreed upon by sales and marketing. These are all key factors in deciding which MA system is most appropriate for your company.

But don’t stop there! Sales should be involved in the implementation cycle as well. Show them the benefits of being able to read online body language, enabling them to make more informed follow up decisions with prospects. Explain the benefits of lead nurturing programs, and how lead scoring will ensure that sales is concentrating their efforts on only the most qualified leads. Our experience shows that when sales is involved every step of the way, implementations of MA systems are the most successful. 

Sales help is critical to develop Use Cases to get company-wide buy in for marketing automation. After all, sales is your best source of information about how your prospects act. Talk to sales about how MA would best fit in with their sales process and the impact it will have on revenue. Then find out which MA system best fits your needs.

Once the MA system has been implemented, it's important to put into practice a continuous feedback loop with sales. Communicate regularly on how the new process is working, if lead quality is high and more conversions are happening, what is going on in the pipeline, and whether nurturing programs are having an effect. 

Reaching true sales and marketing alignment can be a difficult and long journey. Listen to our interview with BrainShark to learn how they used marketing automation to better align sales and marketing.