Health B2B Marketing

Sales and marketing coordination meetings can improve both marketing and sales efforts. Read on for tips on making your meetings successful.

We’ve been talking all month about the need for health care B2B sales and marketing professionals to combine their efforts for greater success. I appreciate all the people who have commented on LinkedIn and via email. I want to cap off the month by offering some tips for marketing folks as they conduct regular meetings with their sales colleagues.

In my last post, I mentioned that a key component of working with my sales reps was a bi-weekly meeting. Depending on your situation, a bi-weekly meeting may seem like too often, or it may not seem often enough. Whatever timing works well for you and your sales peer, make sure that the meetings are scheduled and that they happen.

Talk about marketing activities: Your lead generation campaigns should be the first item on the agenda. Share every point in the planning process. If you’re in the strategy phase, share your messaging with sales and get their feedback. They talk with your audience everyday and often have insight into messaging that you may not have considered.

If you’re in the development phase, share your timelines, warts and all. Let them know when to expect the campaign to run. If you’re in the launch/flight phase, share successes, talk about hot leads, ask for progress reports on leads that you’ve sent over. That final point—progress reports on leads—is critical. Just as we need to be accountable to sales for developing leads, sales needs to be accountable to marketing for working the leads. It’s not enough to run reports from your sales automation tool; be consistent about asking sales to account for your leads.

Lead generation is likely not the only sort of campaign your working on, so be sure to give your sales lead a full update on your lead nurturing programs, your social media activities, your advertising campaigns, your traditional media outreach and your sales support efforts. All this will help sales to understand how you’re influencing the marketplace.

Talk about sales activities: Some of this will automatically happen as you discuss marketing generated leads. But you should also talk about the “big fish” that the sales team is trying to land. Talk about wins (how to replicate them) and losses (what went wrong). Talk about how individual sales territories are performing, about how marketing may be able to help in under-performing areas. Talk about prospect feedback and concerns. You can use all this information as you develop strategy and messaging.

Talk about issues: Sales and marketing, as we’ve discussed previously, often share an underlying animosity. To make sure that animosity doesn’t simmer into full-blown hatred, discuss any and all concerns during this regular meeting. Take on the role of a problem solver, but be sure to listen, and make sure your colleague knows she’s being heard.

When marketing is supporting sales efforts—by providing leads, nurturing contacts, influencing the marketplace—sales works better. The converse is true: when sales supports marketing—by providing feedback, first-hand market intelligence, and customer insight—marketing works better. It’s the opposite of a vicious cycle: it’s a successful cycle. And you can help keep this cycle moving by holding regular sales and marketing coordination meetings.

Photo credit: A Syn

In my experience, there's one key ingredient to well-aligned sales and marketing teams: communication.

In my last post on the topic of sales and marketing integration, I shared some B2B marketers’ ideas for improving the relationship between sales and marketing. Among the ideas were making marketing bonuses dependent on sales goals and aligning sales and marketing under the same executive.

The ideas touched on in the post and in the LinkedIn BtoB Marketing group I pulled them from are intriguing. But what if they are impossible for you to implement? Or what if you’ve tried some of these ideas, with little success?

In my experience, there’s one key ingredient to well-aligned sales and marketing teams: communication.

One of the marketing leaders I interviewed at HFMA’s ANI, Jessica Berens of McKesson, had the same thought. When I asked her the key to helping her marketing team and her sales team work together, she answered:

Constant communication. Our sales team is really what makes marketing effective. We can get those leads generated and that message out there and those awareness campaigns going, it really takes sales to follow-up on that and make the sales happen.

So at McKesson, communication about marketing campaigns and the results of those campaigns is key. It seems marketing won’t be looked at as successful unless sales follows up and works the leads. That’s true of organizations I’ve worked with. The converse is true as well. Sales won’t be as effective without marketing’s branding, awareness and lead generation campaigns.

Another marketing leader I met at ANI, Robin Walters of Halley Consulting Group, also considered communication key:

Quick answer: Communication! In my experience, larger companies often don’t have a mechanism in place for the sales team on the ground to communicate up the chain to the marketing department. Sales reps have valuable on-the-street knowledge about trends that are affecting your business, often before the grapevine reaches marketing and management in the form of a closed sale or other data. I believe marketing planning is important; however, no matter how large your company, you should be ready to react to any changes in the market place that could affect the closure of a sale.

As a marketer, the best business relationships I’ve had with my aligned sales reps have been those where both the sales leader and I were regularly communicating, either by phone, by email or in person. We’d often talk two-to-three times per week. I’d share progress on the projects we were working on; he’d share information on the leads his team was working.

It was more than a meeting just for communication’s sake. The sales lead was able to understand the expectations that the leads I sent him had based on his knowledge of my campaign messaging. And I was able to understand how strong or weak my marketing-generated leads were, because I knew how those leads were closing.

Tell me about your experience, good or bad, with sales/marketing meetings…

Photo credit: Think Panama

Stars aligning may be less rare than sales and marketing aligning, but marketing experts have ideas for helping sales and marketing work together.

A few weeks ago, I posted a question on LinkedIn’s BtoB Marketing Group, which I highly recommend you join. The question was “Why don’t marketing and sales get along?” There were a few snippy comments (one of which read: “Marketing types thing they know everything; Sales types think they are the greatest thing”), but most were quite thought provoking.

One commenter, the GM of marketing at a high-tech hardware manufacturer, summed up marketing and sales differing perspectives:

A certain amount of friction between Sales and Marketing is inevitable, and can actually be a healthy thing if it’s not taken too far. Sales will typically be focused on 30-60-90 days out, while Marketing is looking at 60+, so the needs and priorities are naturally different. A friendly and respectful relationship is vital for a smooth-running operation. But for Marketing to do their job effectively, it will sometimes not sit well with the short term needs of their sales team.

There may not be many Kumbaya sessions between marketing and sales, but many of the respondents to my question saw the need for building greater trust. A marketing director for a cinema advertising agency said this:

One thing we’re doing is really listening to what sales wants from marketing—the top three things—and then we’re going to execute against those requests. If my marketing team takes the step to trust the sales team, our hope is that then the sales team will trust us. In order to earn that trust, we must first give that trust.

Good idea. A little “you scratch my back, I scratch yours” never hurts. Another commenter, a business-to-government marketing consultant, shared an idea that I think could work wonders in getting health care B2B marketing and sales people working more closely:

“In one very successful organization I worked with, marketing bonuses are tied to sales goals. They communicate well!”

A practice leader at an interactive marketing agency offered a more structural idea for aligning sales with marketing:

The most effective sales environments that I’ve been in are where sales and Marketing report to the same structure and are truly teamed. The further apart they get in the organizational structure, the more potential for conflict. The closer they are tied together in terms of performance goals, the better it works.

What do you think about these ideas? Have you seen other ideas for improving sales/marketing alignment that have worked well?

Photo Credit: Adam Brenden

The rivalry between sales and marketing has gone on for too long. Let's discuss on Health B2B Marketing how we can improve sales and marketing integration.

Whether you’re in marketing or in sales, you’ve felt it: the frustration that the sales team isn’t working hard enough. The burning feeling that marketing is out of touch and would be nothing without sales. The uneasiness of handing over a lead, or accepting a lead, to or from a group you just don’t trust.

One sales executive I know told me once that he thought his company’s marketing team, and marketing in general, was “useless.” One HIStalk commentator recently referred to HIT salespeople as “dumb slackers.”

As a marketer, I’ve found myself frustrated with sales. And I’ve been on the other end of the phone with a frustrated sales guy or gal.

Sales vs. marketing: It’s been a struggle in the decade-plus I’ve been doing marketing, and I’m sure the struggle has lasted longer than those 13 years. I have my suspicions on how this mutual animosity came about. My guess is that prior to CRM systems coming into being, there wasn’t much interaction between these two groups. But as soon as their success was dependent on each other, a rivalry sprung up.

The stakes are high. Marketing always seems to be fighting for high valuation and respect from business leaders. And Sales? They’re fighting for their living.

But does it need to be a fight?

This month, the Health B2B Marketing blog will be discussing ways to improve sales and marketing integration. We all have the same goals. If we work together, we can reach them.

I’m interested in your comments. What do you think is the key to sales and marketing integration?

Photo credit: Nic Stage

In case you couldn’t already tell, I’m taking the month of July off (from blogging, not working), but I’ll be back in the saddle again come August.

Some of you may have noticed that I’ve been trying to stick with a theme for my posts. Last month, the general theme, in honor of ANI, was marketing to financial decision makers. The month before, the general theme was time management. Next month, the theme will be sales and marketing integration.

If there’s any subtopic that you’d want to explore for next month’s theme, drop me a line in the comments. In the meantime, enjoy July!

Catherine Valyi, left, and Charlotte Adams, middle, of HealthPort speak to an ANI 2010 attendee about their new audit solution. Photo credit: HFMA.

Now that the craziness from HFMA’s 2010 ANI is over, I thought I’d take it upon myself to put a bow on ANI from an exhibitor’s perspective.

Moving the entire show from Nashville to Las Vegas must have been a terrific effort, not only for the HFMA planners, but also for the vendors and their exhibit managers. Lots of plans needed to change, but from what I saw, it was a terrific success. Kudos all around.

I was impressed by most of the booths I visited and the marketing and promotional efforts that supported those booths. There were a few organizations that obviously phoned it in, but most seemed to have sound trade show strategies. Even my friends at DaVincian Technologies, whose booth didn’t show up because of a shipping error, told me they had a great show despite their troubles. Tongue-in-cheek, they claimed that the generic label may become their new trade show strategy!

The B2B marketing talent in this industry is impressive. If you haven’t already, check out my interviews with marketing leaders from McKesson, Emdeon, Dell Services, HealthPort, Ormed, ClaimTrust and Lynx Medical. I talked with marketing talent from other strong companies, including Ingenix, MedAssets, Halley Consulting and EHR, but wasn’t able to match schedules for an interview. Look forward to more in-depth discussions with leaders from those companies in the coming months.

Not to end on a sour note, but I do have a few critiques for the exhibit. The Las Vegas Strip is a great place to hold an event, but an awful place to exhibit. Attendees love the destination, but exhibitors can’t compete with the casinos and the glitz. HFMA, your exhibitors pay you hundreds of thousands for access to your audience. Try to give attendees more incentives to stick around the exhibit. And by the way, serving lunch in the exhibit hall isn’t the way to do it. I don’t know of any vendor who thinks that’s a benefit.

But overall, great show. Looking forward to Orlando in 2011.

I interviewed Tom Mitchell, market segment manager for Dell Health Services, at HFMA’s ANI 2010 in Las Vegas. It’s the longest interview of the bunch, and we talk about the Dell booth, outreach to CFOs and Dell Health’s belief in social media.

I also caught Anne Clarke, events manager for Dell Health, demonstrating their fantastic interactive solutions board.

I interviewed Jessica Berens, Marketing Director for McKesson. She mentions a nice idea of polling attendees and posting the poll results in their booth. What she didn’t mention is that they also posted the poll results to Twitter. Great idea; great content.

Had the opportunity to interview Tommy Lewis, the senior VP of marketing for Emdeon. His company had the best promotion at ANI by far, involving a Lamborghini and a racing weekend giveaway. Check it out.

Had a chance to speak with Catherine Valyi, a product marketing manager for HealthPort, who is the marketing force behind the company’s new Audit Pro software. She talks about product differentiation, customer-focused technology and using a customer in the HealthPort booth to promote the product.