The challengeValue Based Sales Training

Research indicates that over 80% of leads a marketing department produces do not receive proper and timely attention. As a result they’re not followed up on until they are no longer considered a lead. This has the potential to cause a major rift between marketing and sales teams.

Add to this that 87% of sales and marketing personnel describe each other in negative terms. When asked why, each department points their finger at the other. One says poor lead quality while the other says poor follow-up and sales process. This causes misperceptions, mistrust and misunderstandings at all levels of an organization.

The impact of these differences cannot be dismissed. Much is at stake, including hard costs (sales and revenue growth, expense control and margins) and soft costs (personal grudges, turf battles, posturing and politics).

Alternatively, an organization that has its sales and marketing departments aligned — joined at the hip rather than at each other’s throats — they an experience exponential sales and revenue growth.

The solution

Value Based starts by learning about your organization in order to diagnose issues between the two departments. We look beneath symptoms to discover root causes and their eventual effects on both departments.

After gathering data, we sit down with sales and marketing leadership (SML) to reconcile the past (if necessary), assess the current state, and craft a vision for an aligned future for both departments. 

Once the SML has a realigned vision, we begin the revitalization process by working with one of the two groups starting with uniting each team within itself through workshops and initiatives designed to reunite the two departments. Then we do the same with the other department. The third step is to connect the two leaders to collaborate new strategies, tactics, initiatives, and campaigns to accomplish the two departments’ aligned and desired outcomes.

Examples include:

  • Identify and align target markets
  • Define the stages and desired outcomes of the marketing and sales processes
  • Identify activities and the desired outcomes of each sales and marketing process stage
  • Collaborate and produce ways and means of measuring achievement of the desired outcomes
  • Collaborate and produce ways and means of measuring sales and marketing alignmentsuccesses

The results

There are many wins for an organization that can complete a sales and marketing alignment initiative. The biggest win is the increase in an organization’s profitability through:

  • Improved revenues from an increase in sales and margins due to joint target market identification, collaborated value-based messaging, integrated sales and marketing automation technology (CRM)
  • Improved processes and productivity that reduce marketing expenses and cost of sales
  • Sales that result from more effective campaigns that improve lead quantities
  • Improved strategic and tactical decision-making among both the sales and marketing departments leading to more efficient and productive sales and marketing campaigns
  • Improved collaboration and decision-making fostering more creative prospect awareness and lead qualification campaigns and predictable close rates.
  • Creation of more accurate and accountable closed loop target-market- to-close- rates
In addition to the “hard” dollar gains, there are “soft” culture gains that result from the individual and combined department improvements through:

  •  More honoring and respectful communication within and among department staffs
  • Increased trust and synergy in cooperative projects (trade shows, product launches, customer conferences, etc.)
  • Decreased staff turnover, improved department goodwill and image/reputation gains
So if you feel that a misalignment between your organization’s sales and marketing functions is leading to lost revenues, we can help you increase and sustain revenues with sales and marketing process alignment and improvement.