Aligning marketing and sales: rules for the handover
When marketing and sales rate the same enquiry differently, contacts get lost. Agree together what a good enquiry is, when it goes to sales and what happens to it afterwards.
How you can tell
- Marketing reports many enquiries, and sales considers most of them useless
- Enquiries sit in the CRM for days before anyone gets in touch
- Nobody knows which campaigns last quarter's orders came from
- Both sides work with their own lists and their own metrics
- Campaign messages and the arguments in sales conversations do not match
What is behind the friction
Marketing and sales often work towards different goals. Marketing is frequently measured by the number of enquiries, sales by deals closed. As long as there is no shared definition of a good enquiry, each side optimises for itself.
Separate systems add to this: campaign data in one tool, customer data in the CRM, notes from conversations in emails. Without a shared data basis, neither side sees the path from the first enquiry to the order.
What helps in practice
- Agree together when an enquiry goes to sales, with two or three clear criteria
- Set a deadline for sales to get in touch, and report back to marketing what became of the enquiry
- Use one CRM for both sides, in which every enquiry shows its source
- Define shared metrics from first contact to deal and review them together every month
- Develop messages for campaigns and sales conversations together, based on the questions customers ask in conversation
The role of leadership
Alignment happens where both areas share the same goals. Leadership sets these goals and decides which metrics count for both sides. At Lavazza I merged inbound and outbound into one unit that was jointly responsible for new business.
How we work on it
In marketing and sales consulting I start with conversations on both sides and a look at enquiries, metrics and systems. After that we develop the shared rules in a workshop with marketing and sales, and I support the first months as far as you want.
Does that sound like your situation?
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