The Perfect Building Products Threesome – Marketing, Sales AND Leads, Part 3

Part 3: The Pay-Off: The Impact of Sales and Marketing Working Together

In Part 1 and Part 2 of this series, I talked about what’s happening and why many marketing departments need to change. Marketing and Sales need to working together. This is a new trend and it’s actually working. The connection of data, leads, lead scoring and, most importantly, the technology to manage it all can impact sales beyond what Marketing and Sales can do on their own.

In Part 3 of The Perfect Building Products Threesome, I’ll share some best practices from SiriusDecisions based on a talk I heard from Tony Jaros, SVP of Research, here in Kansas City. SiriusDecisions is one of the leading B2B marketing and sales insight companies. All they do is B2B. They get it. This isn’t a sales pitch for them, but they have forgotten more about how to make this work than most of us know.

One of the best pieces of advice was – technology has to be the last part of Sales and Marketing integration – otherwise you automate bad processes. This is key for any part of technology: you must implement a CRM platform, marketing automation and lead scoring.

Here are some other key points to drive the point home:

• 70% of companies will increase their investment in marketing automation over the next 5 months

• Fewer than 25% of organizations utilize marketing automation to its fullest

• The greatest barrier for a sales rep not a hitting quota is failure by Marketing to demonstrate value and the salesperson cuts the cycle short

• Integrated communications deliver twice as many leads to the pipeline

• 90% of leads from Marketing are not followed up on

• It takes 8-12 attempts to gain marketing engagement. Most companies quit after 5.

• Marketing is the most scalable source of leads. Sales as the lead source is the most expensive non-scalable source of leads.

• Hire sales reps to close. Not to prospect or manage accounts.

• The #1 thing Sales spends time on is developing content (nearly 25% of time)

• Field marketing and demand centers are the only area that continues to get more budget, while advertising and branding budgets continue to decline.

• Do sales and marketing agree on these critical questions:
• What are you selling?
• Who are you selling it to?
• The definition of a lead?
• The way that companies buy what you sell has changed. Have you?

These facts show there many things that can be impacted by you and your marketing team. The key thing to remember is that last bullet – do sales and marketing agree? Marketing cannot continue to do what we’ve done and expect different results. Sales cannot ignore quality leads that marketing has scored and nurtured. The two must both own and love the sales lead process. So when you’re planning your strategy remember the perfect building products threesome – Marketing, Sales AND Leads and make a lasting impact on your organization.