Martha Bush
Cats and Dogs? Hatfields and McCoys? Red Sox and Yankees? Of the classical rivalries through the ages, none beats the consistency of Sales v. Marketing. We’ve spent years developing strategies for clients in marketing departments and been frustrated when the frictions between Marketing and Sales have held back the adoption and/or results of some pretty smart programs.
Unfortunately, too many marketing programs are just not structured properly to really give the sales teams the tools they need. For example, let’s say we build a program to help stop attrition of customers coming to the end of their contracts with a technology company. We might build a predictive model to identify who is likely to leave. That model can obviously drive the targeting for a mailing program to attempt to convert or up-sell likely leavers. The program might be wildly successful, but how does it help the sales team?
Too often, analytics are designed to just drive marketing programs without being extended to the sales team to support them as well. The same kind of process that creates segments of a scored base and maps different messaging strategies to each can be easily transformed into a sales contact and messaging plan. Over the last few years, we have developed numerous Sales Enablement Systems designed to deliver analytical insights in a digestible format – usually through sales support portals – to sales teams. Whether these “knowledge assets” (output of analytics) are delivered through stand-alone sales portals, or become regular feeds into existing sales force automation solutions, or even delivered via automated emails notifying salespeople when their customer’s profile has changed and what they should do about it — the results can be amazing.
And even more amazing — Sales and Marketing can suddenly AGREE about the benefits of an integrated sales and marketing solution!
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