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Study finds more could be done to get marketing and sales working together and in alignment with their company’s growth plan
The CMO Council just released the results of a research study which should interest B-to-B marketing professionals. The study asked 1,000 marketing and sales executives around the world about their companies’ go-to-market capabilities, which are defined as “the strategic and tactical aspects of delivering and supporting a product or service offering in the marketplace.” This includes product specification, pricing, distribution, marketing communications, sales, after-market support and customer experience management.
The study, Driving the Bottom Line from the Front Line, took a look at a broad range of marketing and sales variables tied to companies’ go-to-market processes– including their strategies, functional competencies, operational processes, customer knowledge, relationship management practices, budgeting and level of innovation. It appears there is a lot of room for improvement.
To get a no-charge executive summary of the research study, or the full report for $199, please visit http://www.cmocouncil.org/resources/form_bottom_line.asp .
This study got me thinking.
Perhaps marketers should have a significant portion of their compensation tied to meeting their company’s growth and revenue goals. Yes, many marketers will whine that they don’t control the sales process and shouldn’t be held accountable for sales results. But in order to maximize their compensation (or keep their jobs) marketers would have to shift more of their marketing dollars, time and resources from building brand and awareness to moving prospects from awareness to inquiry to consideration and to purchase.
Don’t get me wrong. I do believe that brand and awareness are important, but I also believe they are only a couple of the ingredients in a successful B-to-B marketing program.
What do you think?
I believe branding is not what we claim to be or do but what the market perceives us to be or do, based on our presence and actions in the marketplace.
Branding comes from the world of farming (I’m an ex farmer). Farmers brand their cattle for easy recognition. This is the same as in business. And here lies the difference.
For farmers, branding is about quality of beef, not about fancy gold-plated branding irons and impressive logos. In the world of commerce, for most businesses, branding is about fancy logos and catchy slogans. Using farmer’s language, most businesses focus on improving the branding iron at the expense of the quality of the beef.
So…
They buy the cheapest and crappiest feed for their cattle to keep costs down.
They hire the most expensive graphics designer to design their brand marks, and buy the most advanced gold-plated and platinum-handled branding iron to create brand awareness.
Then they hire the cheapest farmers (over-aggressive salespeople) to brand the cattle. Most cattle will die because the cheap farmers, instead of branding, will burn the beasts to death.
Then they hire the cheapest butcher in town who will botch up the slaughter and the cutting, and the farmer is forced to sell their beef at rockbottom price as discounted pet food.
But that’s all right because they still have the best brand in town… thanks to the fancy gold-plated, titanium-handled branding iron, which is extensively mentioned and praised in the farmer’s brochures and website.
And once we own the world’s best branding iron, then who cares about the quality of beef anyway?
So what brand is this? A brand to avoid. Because in spite of the rancher’s best effort, the market brands the beef as inedible rubbish.
But branding is not about perfecting the branding iron (e.g. logo), but perfecting the stuff the branding iron is used on, that is, the beef itself (a.k.a. quality of content, client service, innovative solutions, good marketing, etc.).
And in this effort, salespeople should be treated and paid the same way as anyone else in the company. It’s everyone’s job to make the company profitable and successful or else. I believe team works starts with the abolition of rewarding individual contribution. Nowadays it is teams that produce results.
Salespeople are just small links of the chain.
When a CEO gets caught shagging his secretary on the photocopier and the event ends up in the papers, that alone causes so much damage to the brand that no salesperson can remedy it by working harder.
I believe good branding happens when people get exposed to valuable content and great service, and in turn they build the company’s brand by talking about it. And that is a company-wide effort not merely a marketing ploy or PR stunt.
Posted by: Tom "Bald Dog" Varjan | Jun 17, 2008 at 1:28 pm
[...] The article is called Study finds more could be done to get marketing and sales working together and in alignment with the…. [...]
Posted by: The Online Lead Generation Blog » Blog Archive » Sales commission for marketing? | Jul 10, 2008 at 7:06 am
If Marketing is not marching to the same goals as Sales, the company is never going to be as successful as it could be. As Director of Marketing at ReachForce, my bonus is based on the same goals as the VP of Sales. By doing this, my marketing plans are directly aligned with our Sales goals (bookings & new customer acquisions #s).
Because our customers are Marketers, I have insight into how other sales and marketing orgaizations work together. I continually run into Marketers that are blindly passing leads to sales without any feedback loops. I wonder if they really get it? If Sales and Marketing would just communicate with each other and agree to march to the same goals, everyone would win. If Marketers are compensated on the same goals as sales, they will be forced to communicate with sales.
When we sell role-based contact data to Marketers we try to educate them on the best way to use this data. It is not to just pass these leads to sales. The better answer is to use some form of direct marketing to warm up these leads for sales. Also, once passed to sales, the sales team should be able to pass leads that still need nurturing back to marketing. With feedback loops in place marketing and sales teams are able to march to the same goals.
Posted by: Amy Hawthorne | Jul 10, 2008 at 5:50 pm
I attended a marketing conference earlier this week where Rick Kean of the Business Marketing Institute said “Marketing’s primary job is to support sales. All the rest is secondary.” I think he’s right.
Posted by: Mac McIntosh | Jul 24, 2008 at 4:48 pm