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DigitalMarketer Podcast: 7 Steps To Align Sales And Marketing With Author Of Creating Togetherness

How confident do you feel in the alignment of your sales and marketing teams? In this episode, I discuss how easy a misalignment between the two teams is and why it’s a big deal.

I also explain the key triggers that tell you there’s a misalignment, how the buyer’s journey is going to start to bring them back together, and how to align your communication with 7 steps.

RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

Create Togetherness Book
The Alignment Podcast
Jeff Davis on LinkedIn
Jeff Davis on Twitter
Jeff Davis on Instagram

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My Episode On The Marketing Book Podcast

The Marketing Book Podcast: “Create Togetherness” by Jeff Davis

Additional Resources

Aligned to Achieve: How to Unite Your Sales and Marketing Teams into a Single Force for Growth by Tracy Eiler and Andrea Austin

Tracy Eiler Marketing Book Podcast Interview

The Sales Development Playbook: Build Repeatable Pipeline and Accelerate Growth with Inside Sales by Trish Bertuzzi

Trish Bertuzzi Marketing Book Podcast Interview

Roadmap to Revenue: How to Sell the Way Your Customers Want to Buy by Kristin Zhivago

Kristin Zhivago Marketing Book Podcast Interview

Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers by Geoffrey A. Moore

Keeping Up with the Quants: Your Guide to Understanding and Using Analytics by Thomas H. Davenport

The Transparency Sale: How Unexpected Honesty and Understanding the Buying Brain Can Transform Your Results by Todd Caponi

Todd Caponi Marketing Book Podcast Interview

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The Blueprint to Digital Selling Success

B2B is currently at an inflection point where sales leaders are being forced to adopt a digital selling strategy or risk putting themselves at a stark disadvantage that they may never be able to recover from.

Imagine you discover that your roof is leaking after a bad storm. Would you immediately go to ACMERoofRepair.com to schedule someone to come fix it? Probably not. It’s more likely that you would do a Google search to figure out how serious the issue is and whether you needed to patch something up or get a whole new roof. Well…today’s B2B buyer acts in very much the same way. In fact, Forrester has shown that 90% of B2B customers start their journey with digital search. This is clear evidence that if your company doesn’t show up during these online searches at the beginning of the buyer’s journey, you most likely won’t even make the shortlist of vendors to be considered.

This change in the way buyers buy demands that sales leaders transform their approach to one that integrates traditional selling techniques with more modern, digital ones that involve collaborating with all customerfacing functions in a different way especially Marketing. Modern buyers have come to expect a seamless, omnichannel buying experience due to the amazing B2C interactions they experience outside of work with companies such as Amazon, Netflix, Zappos, and more. Gartner predicts that by 2025, 80% of B2B sales interactions between suppliers and buyers will occur in digital channels. This is why it has become missioncritical for all B2B sales leaders to adopt DigitalFirst SellingTM.

What is Digital-First Selling™?

DigitalFirst SellingTM is a process that leverages digital tools, content, and channels to identify, target, and seamlessly engage buyers throughout their entire buying journey. This approach leads to higher engagement and acceleration of speedto revenue. Its primary objective is to help today’s sellers get into the right conversations, with the right people, at the right time.

Some of the key benefits of adopting this strategy include:

Improved lead quality
Reducing sales cycle length
Growth of inbound leads
Increased sales rep productivity
Improved ability to map out and connect with key decisionmakers in the buying group

The Digital-First Selling™ Blueprint

As a sales leader, you must become the change agent for the organization to adopt these new digital selling principles. Here’s how:

Step 1: Understand the Digital-First Buyer Mindset

Increase revenue leaders’ knowledge about how the modern buyer’s preferences have evolved. This can be achieved through activities such as attending workshops, developing a reading list, working with a consultant, and more.

Step 2: Develop a 360-degree View of the Buyer

Connect all sources of customer data (i.e. email, CRM, web leads, etc) to develop a holistic picture of the buyer and establish a single source of truth for the organization.

Step 3: Co-Create a Cross-Functional Revenue Plan

Work across customerfacing functions to gain alignment on the most effective strategy to achieve company revenue and growth goals. This should include agreeing on key gotomarket elements such as product positioning, customer segmentation, ideal customer profile (ICP), product messaging, and more.

This plan should also include a comprehensive path to revenue that starts at the bottom of the sales funnel and works backward to determine the functional contributions ((i.e. marketing qualified leads, conversion rates, etc.) necessary to successfully achieve revenue targets.

Step 4: Orchestrate a Cohesive LeadtoRevenue Process

Map the buyer’s journey based on feedback from actual customers. Ensure the map expands across all customerfacing functions (i.e. marketing, sales, customer service)

Step 5: Develop Buying Interactions that Build Confidence

Identify where gaps exist in content and/or other types of buyer interactions that empower the buyer to progress through the different stages of their buying journey. Ensure each function clearly understands the different stages of the modern buying cycle and how their role can best add value to the customer during each of them.

Step 6: Optimize Digital Selling Tools and the Revenue Tech Stack

Audit both the sales and marketing tech stacks to ensure you have the optimal mix of tech that is right for your business. Also be sure that sales reps have the right digital tools they need to be successful such as video conferencing, sales enablement, automated scheduling, and more.

Step 7: Create a Digital Sales Playbook for Reps

Create a resource that helps sales reps understand how to incorporate all the different selling channels that are available to them in order to have a cohesive conversation with target buyers. There will most likely also be a need for digital sales training.

Step 8: Establish a Formal Feedback Loop

Schedule a consistent cadence of crossfunctional revenue team meetings to focus on pipeline health, sharing business intelligence, and adapting to changing market dynamics.

The shift to digital doesn’t happen overnight. However, the benefits will supercharge your sales team’s ability to target the highest value prospects and close deals faster. Take action today by reviewing this blueprint with your crossfunctional leaders and developing your action plan to thrive in the new normal.

The 7-Step Roadmap to Marketing and Sales Alignment with Jeff Davis [Podcast]

[Listen to the episode]

According to a recent Harvard Business Review article, sales and marketing misalignment is the number one reason why an organization’s annual revenue stagnates or, worse, declines. The new reality is that sales and marketing are continuously and increasingly integrated. Marketing needs to know more about sales, sales needs to know more about marketing, and we all need to know more about our customers. In this episode of Growth Marketing Today, Jeff Davis, a keynote speaker, author, and CEO of JD2 Consulting Group, reveals his 7-step roadmap to sales and marketing alignment.

Get the free growth cheat sheets with all actionable tips and notes from this episode in a one-page PDF at https://growthtoday.fm/103

SAAS Sessions: Aligning Marketing and Sales with Jeff Davis [Podcast]

SAAS Sessions: Aligning Marketing and Sales with Jeff Davis (click here to listen to podcast episode)

Jeff Davis, an international speaker and founder of JD2 Consulting Group, specializes in B2B sales and marketing alignment, pulling from more than 15 years of experience in sales, marketing, and business development.

Your Marketing and Sales team should be married and not have a one night stand
— Jeff Davis

He is like a marriage counselor where he’s counseling the marketing and sales team to have a great marriage and share a special bond.

In this episode, we talked about aligning your Sales and Marketing for maximum ROI.

We also discussed the reasons B2B companies are finding it difficult and costly to achieve sustainable revenue growth. What could be the missing piece of the puzzle?

Are you aligning your #marketing and #sales activities? If not, then you definitely should.

Also, I would love to know if you think Marketers and Salespeople should have a great marriage or not? 😁

Sales Enablement with Andy Paul: How to Align Sales and Marketing, with Jeff Davis [Podcast]

[Listen to the podcast here]

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Jeff says the single biggest challenge facing sales reps today is engagement — how to get through the noise to have a compelling and informative conversation with prospects that gets them to want to talk with you.
The subject line of an unopened email can still drive business through awareness. Reps need to prioritize sales activities between calling and emailing to ensure the most effective use of their time.
One outreach method doesn’t work for each situation. Jeff discusses understanding the buyer. Each person responds uniquely and should be approached differently.
How do you scale from talking to individuals to accelerating growth?
Aligning sales and marketing involves implementing business intelligence you have captured. Sales and marketing need to share their information over the fence, iterate, and change to improve performance.
Jeff started the Sales + Marketing Alignment Summit to bridge gaps between the sales and marketing leaders. He wanted to create a space where sales and marketing leaders could share challenges as a unified group.
There are no two more interdependent groups within an organization than sales and marketing. The work they do independently can be leveraged meaningfully for the other group. Some reps do not understand marketing.
The CEO has to be on board for sales and marketing to align. It is not a tech problem but a people issue. In order to close the rift between sales and marketing, the CEO has to lead the way forward with a clear vision message.
To get the CEO on board, the VP of Sales and the CMO need to work together to drive revenue and produce the business case to inform the CEO of the merits of alignment and the lost revenue from misalignment.
The CEO must consider costs to achieve alignment against lost revenue from misalignment. There may be costs to update platforms between groups.
For a major long-term initiative in an organization, you need the CEO to be the sponsor of sales and marketing alignment as it involves the full organization. In the absence of CEO sponsorship use short-term efforts.
Keeping sales and marketing as separate silos is a barrier to empathy and understanding. Rethink the organization in terms of acquisition, retention, and branding. Look at the individual roles and how they overlap.

Keynote Presentation: Aligning Sales and Marketing To Drive Revenue Growth [Video]

My opening keynote presentation at the GDS RevGen Summit.

How Working At NASA Taught Me To Be A Better Marketer

During my time in college, I had the honor of working at the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. As a mechanical engineering student, it was my dream job. I would get the chance to work in the space industry, something my 7th-grade science teacher had inspired me to do. It was an opportunity to go to adult space camp. And boy was it fun! Where else do you get a chance to meet career astronauts, train on the shuttle simulator, and sit in mission control where the famous words “Houston….we have a problem” were spoken? And even though I gained a wealth of amazing and memorable experiences, the one that stands out the most was learning how to influence without authority. Of course, back then I didn’t know what it was called—but now I understand clearly what lesson I gained from my internship experience.

YOU CAN’T GET THINGS DONE WITHOUT PEOPLE

One of the things you learn very early on as an engineer is that it’s a team sport—much like marketing. You simply can’t finish projects working in a silo. Can you imagine how many engineers it took to build the International Space Station (ISS) or the Mars Rover?

In business, you typically “own” an aspect of a project and work with others to make it happen. Most projects in a business environment are consensus-driven.

I got the chance to work on testing the joint seals of the ISS to make sure they wouldn’t let air in while in space. It was a complicated testing setup that required me to ask for help from many colleagues from different departments.

As I approached the middle of my project, I realized that I needed to have parts made in the machine shop. I was quickly warned that it would take forever to manufacture the parts and that I ought to take that into account for planning purposes. When I asked why that was, I was told that the machine shop workers belonged to a union and simply took their time. I was not satisfied with that answer.

“Marketing is a team sport. Learn to work with others

A little respect goes a long way in building relationships

I was on a deadline because I had to return to college, but I had to figure out something about the parts because I refused to leave my internship without a completed project.

During my free time, I went to the office of the manufacturing facility manager. I explained that I was an intern and wanted to learn more about how the facility worked and how my project would come to life. He was shocked that I had asked, and surprisingly, he was more than happy to show me his domain.

What I learned from that tour was invaluable. One welder told me “You must be a new engineer. The others never come over here.” And it was then that I not only gained respect from the crew in the machine shop, but also understood that in order to get things done, I needed to make my projects personal—not just a job number from some random engineer.

YOU HAVE TO UNDERSTAND HOW TO EXECUTE THE TACTICS TO SET THE RIGHT STRATEGY

From then on, I went to the machine shop on a regular basis. Sometimes I just said “Hi” and other times I asked the crew to teach me how the machines worked. I was not only building relationships with the people that I depended on to manufacture the parts I needed but also learning exactly how the parts that I had designed on paper were built.

I was starting to understand the connection between design and product. By the end of my internship, my project was completed ahead of time. What’s more surprising, I was able to get some of my projects pushed through faster than senior engineers simply because I went down to the machine shop floor and asked for a little help.

Marketers operate in a world that requires building consensus and getting people to do things without being their boss. It’s a delicate balance of driving strategy and preserving relationships. It also requires the ability to communicate clearly and articulate your vision so that others can understand what you and the team are trying to accomplish.

“Great marketers can balance driving strategy and preserving relationships.

A key aspect of creating strategy that many marketers miss is understanding the tactical implications of their decisions to the front line; in other words, understanding exactly how their ideas will be executed. While working at NASA, I learned a valuable life and career lesson. I now understand the importance of being able to work with people to achieve breakthroughs for the team.

Feedback Is Bullsh*t Without A Loop

Many larger organizations by now know or should know they need to be more agile/entrepreneurial in order to survive. However, this can be extremely challenging in a larger organization for several reasons. One that seems more challenging than it has to be is establishing a structured feedback loop between Sales and Marketing. The reason this feedback loop is critical is that it allows the organization to iterate faster because Marketing gets real-time feedback from the best market research provider – Sales (which is also free). As mentioned in The Lean Startup by Eric Ries, it’s about getting “…through the Build-Measure-Learn feedback loop with the minimum amount of effort”.

This data is valuable and necessary. Who best to tell you what the customer really thinks about your product and what should be modified? Enterprise software like Salesforce has functionality that allows for this to happen. A company can start with something as innocuous as a general email address that Marketing can scan to get a pulse of what is happening in the market.

ACTING ON CUSTOMER FEEDBACK IS ALSO KEY

It allows the customer to know that you are listening to them and willing to respond with product/service modifications.
It also demonstrates to Sales that the organization recognizes them as a partner in the business decision-making process. When Sales feels appreciated it is a tremendous motivator for them to be more invested in the entire selling process.

So…….no matter what method, having a structured feedback loop is important. Just creating a “process” is only one part of the story. In addition, the organization must create a level of trust within Sales to feel comfortable sharing both positive and negative feedback. Without a culture that rewards transparency you might as well not have a feedback mechanism because you will only get glowing reviews and other nonsense so people get recognized for sharing the best reviews from customers. This type of relationship is completely counterproductive and will be a waste of everyone’s time. If you want real feedback, reward real feedback. It will be invaluable to the success of the organization.

It’s like the old saying…Garbage In Garbage Out (GIGO).

A Military Approach To Alignment: One Team, One Fight.

This guest blog was written by Ted Corbeill

I am a recently retired Marine Corps Intelligence Officer who is leveraging military best practices to add value through Sales Enablement. As I’ve worked to develop and run data-driven sales campaigns, I’ve experienced difficulties stemming from a lack of alignment between Sales and Marketing. This lack of teamwork is something I’m not accustomed to, but something that could be overcome by adopting a military mindset.

ONE TEAM, ONE FIGHT

To coordinate military operations, Marines use the concept of “main effort” and “supporting effort.” The main effort is the commander’s primary bid for success and tasked with accomplishing the mission (normally the infantry). The supporting effort is responsible for ensuring the success of the main effort (normally includes logistics, intelligence, supporting fires, admin, etc.).

During execution, the focus remains steadfast on mission accomplishment. If the main effort fails, we all fail. Therefore, when faced with a decision the supporting effort simply asks: How can I best support the main effort to enable them to accomplish the mission?

Let’s apply this concept to Sales Enablement. I consider the sales force to be the main effort and Sales Enablement to be the supporting effort. Sales is the CEO’s primary bid for success to hit his/her revenue targets. Sales Enablement is responsible for accomplishing the mission by ensuring sales professionals, the main effort, are highly trained, armed with competitive offerings, and focused on highly qualified leads to lead to a high likelihood of success. If they don’t hit their numbers, everyone fails.

TWO PRIMARY WAYS THAT MARKETING CAN BEST SUPPORT SALES

1. Focus sales-related activities – My career in military intelligence taught me that timely, accurate, and relevant data is critical to successful execution. It drives planning and operations; especially offensive operations. Let me give you an analogy: you’re tasked to destroy an enemy position. Without good intelligence regarding the enemy’s location, you would be forced to conduct “movement to contact” patrols (i.e., search the area until you happen upon them). But if you’re provided timely, relevant, and accurate intelligence, you can plan a deliberate, targeting raid at the decisive time and place where you have the advantage and maximize your chance of success.

Sales can be thought of in the same way, especially with new client pursuits. Without timely, accurate, and relevant data on sales leads, your sales teams are forced to conduct generic prospecting activities (e.g., cold calling). However, with timely, accurate, and relevant market intelligence, they could plan a deliberate, focused sales engagement with relevant messaging targeting qualified leads.

2. Reinforcing sales-related activities – Like supporting arms (artillery or air strikes), marketing can prep the objective to increase the chances of a successful engagement. Sales campaign specific digital marketing messaging targeted at the campaign prospect list can raise buyer awareness and provide a warm call opportunity where the sales reps are following up and reinforcing the initial messaging. In some cases, these marketing efforts can produce inbound leads that help support prospecting activities.

GET ALIGNED IN THE FIGHT

Adapting a oneteam, one fight mentality can be an excellent way to achieve Sales and Marketing Alignment focused on achieving overall revenue goals. It’s just one of many military best practices I’ve adopted to create sales enablement programs that drive revenue growth through data-driven insights, business innovation, and collaboration. You don’t need to have served to adopt these practices at your own organizations.

Ted Corbeill is a recently retired Marine Major who is leveraging his military experience to build and lead innovative sales enablement programs to drive revenue growth through data-driven insights, business innovation, and collaboration at DXC Technology. Before being recruited by DXC Technology (then Hewlett Packard Enterprise), he was a Business Development Executive for a systems integration firm specializing in industrial automation. He is also a Founding Member of the Sales Enablement Society, Dallas Chapter. Ted received his MBA in Management Information Systems from Iowa State University and his BS in Commerce from the University of Virginia.