Talk to any sales or marketing consultant, and you’ll probably get an earful about “sales-marketing misalignment.” This chronic conflict between sales and marketing is the single dumbest reason that otherwise worthy businesses struggle. The classic symptoms: Sales spends a lot of time prospecting because it doesn’t trust the leads marketing hands over; marketing complains about the sales team’s inability to close the leads it hands over; and both sides have a near-pathological aversion to actually talking to each other about this disconnect.
What a wonderful article! CRM is supposed to be a unifying technology, indeed. One of the simple (from a customer point of view) solutions to prevent sales and marketing being at war is having marketing inbuilt with the CRM itself, dont' you think? This way, everyone has clear access to all the data, preventing the situation you described. Agile CRM (where I work) integrates marketing automation with the CRM, providing automatic lead scoring via marketing campaigns as well. Such a system greatly reduces the disconnect between leads/lead scoring/lead conversion mechanisms, and marketing. It also makes people function independently, while being aware of others' actions- probably something that is easier for folks than being forced to work together, eh?
Loading ...
Sales-Marketing Misalignment Hamstrings CRM
Posted by: Christopher J. Bucholtz September 27, 2013 05:00 AMTalk to any sales or marketing consultant, and you’ll probably get an earful about “sales-marketing misalignment.” This chronic conflict between sales and marketing is the single dumbest reason that otherwise worthy businesses struggle. The classic symptoms: Sales spends a lot of time prospecting because it doesn’t trust the leads marketing hands over; marketing complains about the sales team’s inability to close the leads it hands over; and both sides have a near-pathological aversion to actually talking to each other about this disconnect.