The partnership between Marketing and Sales is clearly a critical one in ensuring the achievement of business objectives.  A lot of vendors in the CRM space build their business around the promise of helping a Marketing organization “break down the barriers between” or to put it more kindly, “integrate” Marketing and Sales.   A more fundamental approach is for Marketing to think about the achievement of mutual goals.  At a certain level in any viable, commercial organization, the goals between Marketing and Sales are pre-ordained, mutual and aligned around the profitable growth of the organization. 

There are a lot of approaches to help ensure this alignment of profitably growing an organization down to a practical and tactical execution level.  One is to consider marketing efforts through the lens of making a company and its products and services easy to sell.  The passion of Marketers to ensure a customer-focus, to establish a customer needs-based narrative, to create a customer purchase cycle-centric dialogue, to improve the overall customer experience – to make it easy to buy - sometimes distracts from also considering the need to make a company, and its products and services, easy to sell. 

How does Marketing play a role? 

A starting point is the establishment of a credible, relevant and simple value proposition  that can be internalized, personalized and reinforced by anybody who interacts with a customer or prospect.  Also important, is addressing a customer’s basic buying criteria, what it will take to be included in their considered set for purchase – or value equation.  The value proposition piece is where many Marketers excel.  The value equation piece is harder, as it often requires coordination across multiple disciplines such as pricing, engineering, supply chain, packaging or customer service.  Employee engagement – ensuring a value proposition is internalized, personalized and conveyed as the anchor for any customer interaction – is more challenging, and many times glossed over in a marketing plan.

Sales enablement is another area where a thoughtful approach towards achieving mutual goals can realize rich dividends.  Content and tools which focus a sale team and enable it to be more effective in accelerating the sales cycle, and more efficient in managing their productivity, effect not only top line growth, but also the S&GA operating leverage which contributes to overall profitability.  Marketers need to realize that a natural tension exists between the efficiency of meeting the needs of many across all sales scenarios, and the effectiveness of meeting the needs of one in a specific sales scenario.  Mass customization in the field of sale enablement is itself now enabled by the digital tools afforded marketers and their sales partners.

A form of sales enablement is demand generation.  Demand generation is Marketing’s most prevalent sales enablement approach, and that with the most immediate and discernable impact.  Leveraging marketing analytics to identify high-margin market opportunities that represent a high propensity-to-buy is art form that can be done behind the Marketing curtain, but will translate into higher close-rate efficiency for sales.  Leveraging permission-based marketing  to nurture customers through the purchase cycle and pre-qualify opportunities for sales is a case study in how the Marketing/Sales partnership can drive profitable growth.  A perception amongst a sales channel that Marketing delivers high-quality, qualified leads – or even better, converts opportunities on its behalf – cements the Marketing/Sales relationship on the basis of aligned goals and mutual benefit.