By Brian Carroll

The best mindset, strategy and tactics – and the most astute sales and marketing individuals – are for naught without the collaboration of everyone involved. The unrealized potential can be likened to the batteries in a flashlight. If the batteries aren’t inserted in the right direction or are otherwise out of proper contact, their latent power is unusable.

Likewise, the harmonious interaction of sales and marketing is crucial. If they are askew and going in dissimilar directions, sales and marketing will not empower a successful complex sale or sales lead strategy. Bottom-line sales performance reflects just how well sales and marketing are working together.

I liked the collaboration tips in Sherri Leopard's article, "Five Steps to Connect Marketing to Sales, and Sales to Financial Results" in MarketingProfs.com (requires subscription).

I've summarized Leopard’s tips with my thoughts below:

Sales and Marketing must collaborate on defining leads and marketing objectives.
What gets measured gets done. Connect sales and marketing metrics together.
Focus on the data points you REALLY need to measure in your CRM.
Is your value proposition clear? Does your sales team have sales-ready messaging?
Create content that's relevant for each stage of the buying cycle.
Simply put, what matters most is having everyone on the same page, integrated and respecting one another. If you can't do that, your brilliant lead generation plans and tactics won't matter.

June 21, 2006 | Permalink

TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/5083379

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Sales and Marketing as a Team: Five Tips to Improve Performance:

Comments
You couldn't be more right on. I've been the marketing arm for a few online service firms for the past 5 years or so, working directly with sales.

The key for the marketing side is to ask a lot of questions, and stay proactive inside your sales teams heads. Then give them what they need to close.

Good advice here for all.

Posted by: Jim Kukral | Jun 21, 2006 11:54:35 AM