Crossing the Sales/Marketing Divide
The dysfunction -- some would say outright hostility -- that continues to manifest itself between the sales and marketing departments at many organizations can be disheartening, to say the least.
A new global survey of more than 500 sales and marketing professionals by the CMO Council and its Coalition to Leverage and Optimize Sales Effectiveness (CLOSE) finds that less than 20 percent of respondents regard their sales and marketing organizations as extremely collaborative; while among those who have CRM applications, only 13 percent view the application as highly valued and widely deployed, and 50 percent said they had trouble finding customer account data, did not have enough information, or had none at all.
But there are signs of improvement out there. My feature in the next issue of 1to1 Magazine discusses how one company, Tektronix, has acted to successfully overcome this gap (which, the company's VP, marketing Martyn Etherington says was more like a chasm), and there's additional information indicating that the situation may be improving.
A new survey from Eloqua shows that marketing and sales are, in fact, becoming more closely aligned. Although 86 percent of those marketers surveyed felt that the pressure on them to account for results has increased, 68 percent reported that they are now measuring the quantifiable results of marketing to the bottom line. Also, the survey uncovered that 64 percent of marketers feel that their marketing programs are more effective today versus three years ago. Due to this fact, more than 90 percent rated the relationship between their sales and marketing departments as "okay" or "excellent."
"The rumors of the death of the sales/marketing relationship are greatly exaggerated," Eloqua CTO and founder Steve Woods told me. "With the move to online, both sales and marketing have a greater ability to dig deep and get richer information; they can see what pages Customer X looked at, what he looked at before and after visiting their site, whether or not they downloaded the video, and so on."
The concurrent loss of the "reading the customer's body language" factor is thus obviated, Woods says, "by reading this 'digital' body language. There's an increasingly renewed relationship between sales and marketing, a better spirit of cooperation."
Historically, he says, "Marketing considered a business card a lead, while sales felt a real lead was when somebody was ready to buy. Now the relationship is being crystallized a lot more based on common currency and that digital body language. We're now seeing more love between the two groups."
Well, let's not get too carried away. But the potential for crossing the Great Sales/Marketing Divide is clearly there.
How would you describe the situation at your company -- and how can it be improved?
