Sales and Marketing – the Interface
Volumes have been written about the sales-marketing interface, its impact on company performance and how a smoothly-operating interface can create value for customers and shareholders alike, while dysfunctional or suboptimal interface blocks the road to success for all stakeholders involved.
Sales and marketing are both strongly committed to company success. Friction between them is therefore not fundamental, but rather stems from the lack of holistic perspective.
The solution is to create a well-defined interface that expresses:
The sales world in marketing terms for the marketing team
The marketing world in sales terms for the sales team
In short, marketing needs to fully understand what sales needs to close more business, and sales really needs to help marketing folks understand what interests and engages buyers, and the intricacies of the sales process.
Simple, yet much easier said than done!
Good will and team spirit usually hold until mid-quarter, when the finger-pointing starts. From then on, accurate and mutually agreed on terminology and process are necessary.
We can either become the neutral trusted advisors, or “translators”, and build that much needed transparent interface that provides quantitative and qualitative answers to questions like:
- Does the marketing organization generate the right number / mix of leads?
- How should lead quality be measured?
- How many leads turn into deals? What characteristics do they share?
- What can we learn from leads that failed to close? Why?
- What makes a lead qualified for sales?
- How can marketing increase the probability of a lead’s success – even after it’s in sales’ hands?
We recommend establishing productive interfaces before friction arises. But it’s never too late!
