Five Questions to Assess Your Sales and Marketing Alignment
This quote has really stuck with me the past week:
The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous. The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service fits him and sells itself. Peter Drucker
With resources shrinking and the load of work increasing for the average marketer, it’s difficult to keep the goal of your marketing efforts top of mind. Every day we deal with employee issues, the onslaught of emails, the deadlines, the budget… all detractors from what is key to a healthy business.
If you want your marketing efforts to pay off, you must assess your program on a constant basis and keep atop how your resources are being utilized. Here are 5 questions to help lead you to a more effective marketing program:
- Are the employees who face your clients, or their managers, aware of the messaging that you are communicating with your marketing program? It’s essential, especially with your new clients, that your employees understand the expectations set throughout the marketing and sales process. Exceeding expectations makes happier clients.
- Is your marketing program making it easier for your sales staff to sell your product or service? If not, you must analyze the additional roadblocks to converting a client and incorporate strategies to overcome them.
- Are the personal, team and departmental goals throughout your organization compatible with your marketing efforts or in conflict with them? A common example is a company that sets productivity goals for employees that actually reduces the quality of customer service, thereby weakening your retention marketing efforts.
- Are you able to quantify the return on marketing investment for each of your strategies? Many marketers are attracted to the shiny objects rather than measuring and understanding exactly what is working. We tend to gravitate to work we like to do rather than work that delivers.
- Have you constructed a process map of your marketing strategies? A process map starts with segmenting your prospects by size, industry or source… then defining the needs and objections of each… then implementing the appropriate measurable strategy to drive results back to a few central goals.
Providing this level of detail in your overall marketing program will open your eyes to conflicts and opportunities within your company’s marketing strategies. It’s an effort that you should undertake sooner rather than later!