For years, I have heard the debates about where the line should be drawn between sales and marketing. In fairness, marketing is often misunderstood.
Ask 5 senior people in a company what marketing means to them and you’ll likely get 5 different answers. Sure, there are the 5-7 “Ps” of Marketing (depending on when you learned them). Yes, it’s about building segmentation, awareness, engagement and many other core activities. But, these are all a means to an end. That “end” ultimately is abut increasing sales!
We marketers love numbers. With the digital era in full swing, we have become mesmerized by an array of website, SEO, and social media statistics. Of course, the analytics are critical. But, let’s not lose sight of what counts most at the end of the day – leads, opportunities, and closed business. These metrics matter most to your executive. They dictate your budget, how many people you can hire and how your personal performance will be viewed.
In simple terms, marketing is responsible for all activities that eventually create well-qualified opportunities. Of course, sales then needs to step in to get those deals nurtured and closed. Marketing is usually not tasked to find 100% of all new leads. There is also sales prospecting and account management, but marketing often helps impact these as well. When marketing works, the funnel increases. When you have a good sales team and processes, the win rate increases.
Showing Marketing’s Impact on Increasing Sales
The Internet has drastically changed the dynamics of traditional sales and marketing functions. Marketing leaders are becoming even more accountable for revenue impact so they must keep their “eyes on the prize” in driving and showing better financial results. Here are a few suggestions that can help:
- Make sure your strategy doesn’t fall into the trap of “activity for activity’s sake.” Think about each part of your plan and keep asking “how will this help build new business and when?” Look at all you do through a lens of results rather than tactics. It doesn’t matter if you lean more towards social media, email marketing, events, or telesales – as long as you stay focused on the end-game. This includes programs that stimulate existing customer growth as well.
- As part of your planning, make sure you have a handle on the sales pipeline requirements. Also, get to know your conversion rates intimately. Be definitive about the contribution expected from marketing. Define and agree on how many leads and opportunities are realistic based on your resources and historical data. Once you know that, plan using these numbers as guideposts.
- Learn the timing of when your initiatives and campaigns will turn into leads. This will depend on many factors including your industry, buying patterns and the average length of your sales cycle. What you plan this quarter, may not impact sales for many quarters to come. Taking this lag-time into account is crucial when presenting your forecasts and results.
- Be diligent about showing marketing’s impact on revenue. For every new deal your company lands, make sure you figure out how the client found you, how your brand was reinforced and what convinced them to buy. You should know where prospects are coming from, and the role marketing played to attract them. Train sales to get these insights early and document them in CRM. If you have a marketing automation tool, it can do much of the tracking for you, The more information you can have to show your team’s impact on the top-line, the better!
- Think “Customer Lifetime Value” or CLV. If you don’t know your average CLV – figure it out. There‘s a huge difference between counting a $5,000. initial order compared to $300,000. over the next 2 years. Some would say Marketing’s role ended with the original order because sales and operations carried the ball from there. But I would argue marketing continues to contribute through brand reinforcement, sales enablement, and customer communications, and more importantly, that $300.000 client wouldn’t exist if not for Marketing bringing them in the door.
- Finally, if you are a marketing leader, re-build your team’s culture to become more concerned about sales results rather than just Twitter impressions or Facebook likes. If your people are on a bonus plan, you may want to consider tying some of the variable compensation to the number of new leads and opportunities created in a given period. This helps sharpen the focus and promotes a tighter alignment with sales.
Business owners and CEOs I talk with are naturally obsessed with growth, and they have a hard time connecting the dots between that and their marketing investments. With B2B, the sales cycles tend to be longer and more involved, making this even more challenging. Marketers need to realize that increasing sales should always be the prime objective. When they can show how their efforts link to this overarching goal, their value in any organization will take a sharp turn for the better.