The fact that marketing and sales are organized as two different pillars within organizations is decades old. You have been hearing about the mismatch between these business units for a long time in almost every organization. We still hear from many organizations that marketing and sales do not work well together, although it is often thought that they do. But what is going wrong now? And what steps can you take to make the 2 departments work in harmony to grow results?
The ‘traditional’ role of B2B marketing
The main role of marketing in B2B is to bring products and services to the attention of the target group in order to generate leads. By loading the brand, reaching larger target groups and generating content, marketing ensures that potential buyers leave their details so that sales can ultimately follow up. This concerns a marketing qualified lead (MQL) or a sales qualified lead (SQL). An MQL is a potential customer in the orientation or consideration phase. Examples of an MQL are:
- A lead has viewed a product page multiple times
- A lead has requested information
- A lead downloaded a whitepaper
An SQL is a potential customer in the decision phase. Examples of an SQL are:
- A lead has requested an appointment
- A lead wants to be contacted by telephone
- A lead has questions about the price or the product
The ‘traditional’ role of B2B sales
The main role of B2B sales is to convert the said leads into a customer. This can be by helping the customer with the decision-making process during the appointment by thinking about the solutions that the product or service will offer to the customer. It’s actually simple: marketing provides the leads, and sales ensures that these leads become customers.
The frustrations
We notice that there are a lot of frustrations between sales and marketing. Think of comments like: ‘Marketing only costs money and sales makes money’ or ‘Sales does not follow up on our leads properly’.
So you can read here quite a lot of frustrations that we still regularly encounter. Even in organizations where management claims that marketing and sales work well together, you still see many of these frustrations on the work floor.
Common goal
But at which organizations do I not encounter these frustrations or encounter them less often? In organizations where there is a common goal, you see that this occurs less often. Both marketing and sales are based on new customers. Because when marketing becomes responsible for conversion and no longer just for the number of leads, you see that cooperation with sales is sought more closely and not just leads are thrown over the wall. And when sales also becomes responsible for generating leads, sales is more likely to contact the marketing department to indicate which content they really need to generate good leads and conversion. Ultimately, the most important thing is that there is cooperation between marketing and sales, then the frustrations will be much less.
First steps
The first steps that can be taken towards better cooperation between marketing and sales are:
- Involve sales in the marketing meetings and vice versa
- Give sales more freedom when sharing personal content
- Make it easy for sales to ask marketing to write specific content
- Also make sales responsible for generating leads themselves
- Set up common KPIs (key performance indicators).
- Involve sales in converting an MQL to an SQL
These are of course a number of steps that can be taken as an organization. With the dot on the horizon: marketing and sales becoming one department. Because in many organizations this is already claimed by management. But the question is: does marketing and sales also feel this, or do they just think that it is already well set up?