Critical need to bridge sales, marketing divide

Over 55% of some 506 sales and marketing professions surveyed by the CMO Council and its Coalition to Leverage and Optimize Sales Effectiveness (CLOSE) say their companies have yet to, or are only planning to, implement formal programs, systems or processes for unifying sales and marketing functions. While many recognise the benefits of better partnering across these key demand-generating functions, they are being stymied by lack of processes and systems, siloed operations, insufficient management mandate, and ineffective reporting and organizational structures.

The study, which reached out to a wide cross-section of marketing, sales and channel management professions worldwide, is part of a new initiative by the CMO Council to more tightly couple sales and marketing in helping companies drive business performance, improve lead quality and conversion rates, and acquire higher value, more profitable customers through better analytics.

Key findings from the CLOSE Sales & Marketing Integration Audit showed that:

• Less than 20% of respondents see their sales and marketing organisations as extremely collaborative; most felt the two groups had intermittent relations and interactions.
  
• In looking at ways sales could add value to marketing messaging and communications, survey participants felt engaging strategically with customers to better understand issues and needs was the most valuable contribution.
  
• In contrast, two of the most important roles marketing could play in optimising sales performance were fielding campaigns that generated and nurtured leads and opportunities, as well as providing customised value-selling content and presentation materials.
  
• Among those who have customer relationship management (CRM) applications, only 13% view the application as highly valued and widely deployed, while 42% see growing acceptance and adoption.
  
• While 50% of those surveyed said they had pretty good or extensive visibility in to customer accounts and business activity, the other 50% said they had trouble finding customer account data, did not have enough information, or none at all.