Aligning Sales and Marketing for Dynamic Growth

One of the most intriguing issues that surfaces when working in organizations is the lack of effort to align sales and marketing. There are numerous companies that have sales and marketing groups that refuse to even talk or dialogue with each other. It is equally amusing that the leaders of these companies do not understand why their sales results are below expectations. There is a simple solution--align the sales and marketing teams.

The lack of understanding about the role of marketing leads to commodity building practices and price cutting activities. Individual sales people create their own issues and challenges by doing things like: selling to a non-buyer; selling to the wrong type of customer; and not understanding what the customer is willing to buy. Marketing people understand the principle of niche marketing, yet, seldom educate sales people of what problems their products solve. Therefore, opportunities are missed as sales people chase the sale rather than the account.

When both sales and marketing are aligned you get a more focused sales process that is aligned with the buyer's buying cycle and success is created. In fact, companies and individuals that have aligned their sales and marketing practices have experienced significant growth--both in sales and margins.

An example of one individual who has aligned both sales and marketing is Stanley Mills of Crye-Leike Real Estate. Back in the late 80's Stan discovered computers and customer databases. Not only did he discover these instruments of increased productivity, he embraced them as a tool to develop relationships with his growing customer list. Using birthdays and anniversaries and holidays and anything else that would create a customer contact or touch--he made certain that his customers remembered him. Most importantly, the consistent contact created a top of mind awareness--Real Estate equaled Stanley Mills. His referral business grew to the point that he hired people to do his administrative work (on his payroll) so he could sell real estate.

Here are four keys for aligning marketing and sales:

1. Recognize that a customer database is one of your greatest assets.

If used properly, it will provide you with on-going business, trend analysis, an ideal customer profile and a never-ending supply of referrals. You must understand that a true customer database is not a Rolodex file. A Rolodex file is a contact lookup file. A customer database is an interactive source of new business, trends analysis, customer opinion source, credibility machine and most importantly--repeat business.