Health B2B Marketing

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