There is an interesting blog post over on Geoffrey James’ Sales Machine blog at BNET that discusses the top 5 lies marketing tells sales. While these lies may be true, the post focuses entirely on what doesn’t matter instead of what does.
What matters is finding a way to unite the marketing and sales silos within an organization to create a lethal revenue producing machine. Not the bickering and lies each silo tells one another in losing companies.
That type of focus within any company will only lead to a bankruptcy court filing. For some companies this will be the only way out because they just don’t get it and never will. For others it will be an opening to take market share and crush the competition.
The choice is up to you and you should be doing everything in your power to understand the massive changes taking place within Sales 2.0 organizations so you can reap similar success in your business.
Marketing & Sales in a Sales 2.0 Organization
The companies that will be the leaders of tomorrow will remove the barriers between marketing and sales. Sales 2.0 companies will use the value each organization represents to fuel off each other and create more predictable and sustainable revenue. No organization is better than the other because they each bring unique value to the table and contribute to each others success.
Some companies are implementing Sales 2.0 processes, people and technology to create lean, mean revenue producing machines. Their cost of sales is lower than the average company in their industry and their people are better trained. Their marketing department generates consistent, quality leads that get turned over to the sales force keeping sales reps’ pipelines full. Their sales reps focus solely on selling, not lead generation. Closed loop is tracked and analyzed so they know what is working and what isn’t. Quite simply, if your not a Sales 2.0 company yet you will lose to the one’s that are. They have a distinct competitive advantage over you.
Don’t panic yet. There is time to learn and position yourself and your business to win in the New Sales Economy. That’s what the New Sales Economy blog is all about.
So where should you start? First, it helps to know who is using Sales 2.o and winning so you can begin to understand how you can do the same.
Checkout Oracle, Genius.com, Webex (Cisco), Salesforce.com and EMC. Some of these companies stories are in Anneke Seeley’s and Brent Halloway’s new book entitled Sales 2.0: Improve Business Results Using Innovative Sales Practices and Technology. If you want to understand in depth the shifts taking place in the sales and marketing profession go read the book. It’s well worth it and it will provide you with an understanding of how Sales 2.0 is changing the way companies and sales reps sell.
Next, set up a Google alert for Sales 2.0 and begin to read everything you find interesting on Sales 2.0. If you immerse yourself long enough you will be amazed at the possibilities and opportunities that adopting Sales 2.0 can bring to you or your business.
I started off this post by saying Geoffrey James’ post was way out of focus and now I hope you see why. It’s a great blog but it missed the mark on this one. Don’t focus on the differences between the marketing and sales silos at your company. That’s just sweating the small stuff. Start focusing on how to leverage marketing and sales to drive them together into a revenue producing machine using Sales 2.0.
The world is changing and it’s going to require different mindsets, approaches and processes to succeed in the New Sales Economy. Make sure to subscribe to the New Sales Economy blog so you won’t miss all the Sales 2.0 & Social Media tips to help you connect, create more opportunities and increase your business! You can also follow me on Twitter @ChadALevitt.
Related posts:
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
I’m all in favor of Sales 2.0 because it makes marketing more measurable and (more importantly) measurable in a quantitative, objective manner, with the metrics tied to actual sales. Absent such measurement, however, marketing becomes dysfunctional or worse, takes on inappropriate airs. Example: the expression “marketing drives sales” — a blatant attempt to take credit for the work of another group. You must remember that Sales 2.0 implementations are in place at perhaps 1 percent of U.S. companies (and that’s probably a high estimate). The great unwashed are still measuring marketing using bogus concepts like “brand equity” – and wasting time and money in the process.
@Geoffrey I agree Sales 2.0 makes the marketing and sales silos within a company more accountable for their results. This facet of Sales 2.0 is one of the major benefits gained from being a Sales 2.0 organization. Everything needs to be measured quantitatively as you point out and mapped back to revenue. If your not using metrics to gauge results your not using Sales 2.0 correctly.
You point out a very true fact in that about 99% of all U.S. companies are NOT using Sales 2.0. This is to their detriment. And therein lies the massive opportunity to crush your competition by implementing Sales 2.0 and creating a competitive advantage! Move now before it’s too late.
Great comment!
I’m all for technology enablement to bridge the sales and marketing divide. I built a career on it. But, if you don’t have a clearly defined process and agreed upon goals, all the technology in the world won’t help. Look at how SFA is really just a contact tool for sales in most organizations. Sales won’t get insight from 2.0 unless clarity exists in the dialogue, process, and objectives that sales and marketing agree to.
I’m not sure that Geoffrey James is completely off the market. What I think he gets at in the post is that Marketing sees itself at the head of the sales engagement/lead funnel versus being part of the sales engagement process. They want to start a dialogue and clear the way for sales to close the deal. Marketers that get it are actually part of the sales process right beside sales closing the deal- with S2.0 or not.
@Michele You correctly point out that without a clearly defined process technology will not help much. One of the requirements for Sales 2.0 to work is to have a clearly defined sales process that creates predictable and sustainable revenue. The whole point of the Sales 2.0 methodology is to leverage the right people, processes and technology to create more revenue at a lower cost of sales driving higher profit margins and value for the business. Not to mention if your a sales rep you will make more money!
Thanks for your thoughts.
Chad- Right on target! A lot of lead generation related problems are the result of sales and marketing silos within companies; exacerbated by the fact that the two seem to be at war more often than operating as allies. In a recent blog, Webinar Follow-up: Why Leads Don’t Become Customers, I noted that the disconnect between sales and marketing often means that well-attended webinars (and thus successes from a marketing perspective) often don’t translate into new customer acquisition (thus are flops from a sales perspective). Why? Because often sales is out of the loop completely in the lead generation process – in this case the webinar – so that they are suspicious of the quality of the leads marketing hands off to them and thus often don’t follow-up with folks who have sat through an hour-long webinar and have been thoroughly ‘dipped in’ the company’s service or product.
You hit the nail on the head when you say that the goal should be driving together sales and marketing!
@ Larry thanks for posting your comment here and on The Customer Collective. Your right on the money with your perspective and agreement that driving sales and marketing together is the goal for successful Sales 2.0 companies.
Keep reading the New Sales Economy blog and I hope you’ve subscribed.