This is the blog transcript of our video What Marketing Needs from Sales for Sales and Marketing Alignment. If you’d like to see more of our videos, you can subscribe to our YouTube channel here.
In the last video we talked about what sales needs from marketing to align their efforts. But what does marketing need from sales to make sure that BOTH sides are aligned in their efforts?
Hey everyone, I’m Ian Campbell, CEO of Mission Suite. Before we jump into today’s video, do me a favor and hit the subscribe button and ring the bell so that you’re notified whenever we post new videos.
Ideally, you want marketing and sales to have a “set ‘em up, knock ‘em down” type of relationship. Marketing should be “setting them up” or finding the leads and positioning them to be a good sales opportunity and Sales should be “knocking them down” or closing the deal.
Last time, we talked about what sales needs from marketing to “knock ‘em down”. If you haven’t watched it yet, you should definitely check it out. There’s a link to it here in the info card and in the description below.
Now we’re going to dive into what marketing needs from sales to be able to hold up their side of the revenue equation – what do they need to be able to “set up” the right leads?
The first thing that marketing needs is a clear set of goals.
Now I’m not just talking about “get leads”…or even “get 10 leads per week”. How are you qualifying a lead? What do you need to know about them to qualify as a lead?
A lot of marketers these days refer to a first name and email address as a “lead”. That might be fine for what they’re doing but there’s no way that you’re going to sell to someone based on their first name and email address.
This is what I’m talking about when I say that marketing needs clear goals from sales. As a marketer, if I know that a “sales lead” means full name, company name, phone number, email address and annual revenue, that helps me understand exactly what you need and I can plan accordingly.
On the flip side, if you as a sales person need that information but don’t share it with me as the marketer, how am I going to set you up correctly?
Clarity is everything when it comes to goal setting and even more important when it comes to sales and marketing alignment.
The next thing that marketing needs from sales for alignment is regular planning sessions.
It’s during these planning sessions that you’ll get to discuss how the funnel looks and actually create a plan to ultimately develop leads from just a name and email address into the full “sales” lead that they’re looking for.
This is when you really get to be strategic about how leads are generated, nurtured and qualified and ultimately how they’re handed off to sales.
This will also generate discussions about the different types of content that your prospects are going to be consuming as well as anything else that may need to be developed to support the lead generation or sales process.
These planning sessions might seem obvious or unnecessary but there’s a lot of productive information that can come out of them.
We created an infographic about aligning sales and marketing efforts. Click here to download it.
And last, but certainly not least, marketing needs feedback.
Feedback is huge when it comes to alignment. In fact I’d go so far as to say it’s probably the most important piece of this puzzle that marketing needs.
Without feedback, marketing has no idea what’s happening with the leads that they’re creating, the content they’re creating, or pretty much anything else that they’re working on.
And I’m not talking about “these leads suck” or “no one’s reading this whitepaper”. Again, just like the goals, this feedback has to be specific and detailed.
If the leads are no good, why not? Is there not enough information? Are they the wrong position in the company? Is the company size too small?
If the content’s not getting enough traction, are they getting any feedback from the people they’re talking to? Does it not answer the right questions? What other information do they need?
The only way that you’re going to learn any of this is with specific feedback from sales to marketing.
The key to making sure that all of this works is a good CRM and marketing platform…kind of like Mission Suite!
If you want to learn more about how Mission Suite can help you manage all of this and really align your sales and marketing efforts, click here to register for one of our demo webinars.
Hey I hope you got something out of this video. And if you did, go ahead and give it a thumbs up and maybe a share so that others can see it too. Also, don’t forget to subscribe to our channel and ring the bell so that you’re notified whenever we post new videos and while you’re at it, check out these videos too!
We’ll see you next time around!