A Basic Problem with Enterprise Marketing is Sales and Marketing Alignment
Enterprise marketing doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Successful campaigns are done in close concert with your company’s sales team. That way, the two sets of goals are aligned, ensuring that the marketing messages flow into the approaches taken by your sales team.
The first step is to get the marketing and sales teams in the same room so that they can set some direction from a 30,000 foot level. This includes setting up their goals as well as the ways that they will be measured and the processes that will hopefully accomplish them.
Next, both teams can work together on tactics to execute the big picture enterprise marketing strategy. These include deciding which personas the company wants to target and choosing which messages to send out as a part of the inbound marketing process. Your two teams also will need to work together to define their systems for managing leads as they come in and work their way through the marketing process and sales funnel.
An aligned process also requires clearly set out definitions for when and how leads enter the sales funnel. These definitions guide the marketing team as to when a lead leaves their sphere of influence while also letting the sales team know when they should start working with a prospect.
Merely having an enterprise marketing and sales team work together isn’t enough, either. Alignment also requires the right tools, and requires them to work together. Successful inbound marketing campaigns typically lean on marketing automation software that handle the process of scheduling, targeting and tracking outbound marketing messages. On the other hand, sales teams spend large quantities of time working with their customer relationship management applications. When the marketing automation software and CRM packages work together with the rest of your company’s ERP or business intelligence suite, you position yourself for success.
