How do we make sure your marketing and sales strategies are aligned?
Our marketing strategy is long-term. We want to get establish ourselves in our community and begin to collect emails to start a newsletter. Our sales strategy is short-term. We need to start making sales now to follow through on our marketing plans! How do you keep both plans aligned when it seems like they are in different directions?
Expert Answers
Sort by Date
Sort by Votes
Feb 12, 2016
Hi Rema,
From your description, it seems your sales and marketing teams live miles apart under the same roof. And while the marketing is bringing in the leads, there isnt much conversion 'sales' happening.
Here are a few points to consider;
1. Does the marketing team know what the sales team are doing and vise-versa? The strategy here would be for the two to work closely together to develop a working model that takes into account, the costs of sales - customer acquisition and conversion ratios. This is important as it makes it easier to know whether you can meet your sales targets - and to understand what is or not achievable depending on their set targets.
2. Maximisng sales is not only dependent on a good marketing campaign but also through proficient and smart sales people. They understand customer demographics and like the marketing team deliver customer experience every time they interact with their customers.
It is therefore important that both sales and marketing teams work together to understand their budgets and any constraints, develop an integrated sales/marketing strategy that is deliverable and measurable within those constraints.
Hope this helps and feel free to connect if I can be of further help.
Best of luck
Feb 14, 2016
First off, be sure to have meetings together. For some reason, companies still separate these meetings which makes zero sense. Secondly, after getting the two departments aligned, have your sales team utilize the marketing efforts in their sales system. For instance, if you incorporate a content marketing approach where you address many of the questions that your marketplace is asking, set up an automated email program where the prospects of the sales team get a series of emails with helpful info (the marketing team will be the ones to set up the automated programs). So when the sales team reaches out to them, they are already getting warmed up to them and your company due to the helpfulness of the info you have provided on their behalf.
Another thing you can do is to have the sales team BCC the marketing department whenever they answer a new questions, this way the marketing team can be instantly made aware of the types of problems or questions that are being asked by your prospects. The marketing team will then take these questions and answer them in the form of medium to longer form content (i.e. a blog post) that will then be made part of the automated programs listed above. It can be a beautiful ongoing cycle of alignment and success.
Feb 12, 2016
Hi, Rema,
When dealing with sales, marketing and even customer service teams, everyone needs to be playing in the same ballpark with the same game plan.
Yes, a long-term plan is necessary with overall objectives and goals. Then you need a strategic plan and a tactical plan. Strategies that will help reach the goals and objectives, which will be different for each department/team and then a detailed tactical plan -- who's doing what, when and where.
In today's marketing world, analytics, insights, metrics, KPIs, etc., all need to measured and reported monthly. Based on these reports, the strategic and tactical plans, as well as short-term goals, need to be adjusted accordingly.
Hope this helps,
Giselle Aguiar
AZ Social Media Wiz
Feb 13, 2016
It appears evident that your long term marketing strategy is significantly flawed if it is only concerned with long term objectives. A Marketing plan should concern itself with the immediate, short and medium term too. Your long term plan serves primarily to provide a reference point for everything you do in the period starting 9am Monday morning until the date that it states as fulfillment of your long term objective.
Go back to the drawing board and look at what is required right now to set you on the path you have defined, then fill in all the banks to build a marketing strategy that can be practically implemented every day you are in business.
The collection of email addresses is (and should be), the result of sales activity never (or only rarely), the precursor for it. Your sales strategy has nothing to do with collecting e-mails, in fact collecting emails is seen by so many start-ups as essential when in reality the process is simply a distraction from actually conducting profitable business.
Feb 13, 2016
Hi Rema,
I think this is a challenge that all businesses face! All long-term marketing plans have a short-term or current component to make sales.
I would start by making sure all sales and marketing teams are clear on short-term goals.
Another great way to spur sales is to offer customers something free and of great value such as a free ebook or gift is not only a great way to build an email list but a a great way to capture email addresses.
I hope that helps and best of luck!
Charlotte Chipperfield
CEO & Founder of Chipperfield Media LLC.
Feb 16, 2016
Hi Rema
There is nothing like stating the obvious but here we go..your Business Plan is your bible and should incorporate both marketing and sales in order that you can develop a road map to take you from initiation to successfully achieving your objectives (which evolve as time goes on).
I think you may be approaching this from the wrong direction. For instance, if your sales plan is to sell 100 units then you should be building a marketing plan to support this objective, not the other way round.
Sales clearly sits at the sharp end and companies live and die through the success of their sales people. Marketing may be considered a support mechanism for the sales function promoting your brand, products and services to help develop your market.
There is no point spending a lot of time and money developing a long term marketing plan when your sales people are being rewarded on a short term basis. Sales people, new business or account managers, are the same the world over and will focus on whatever puts money in their pockets. One highly motivated sales person is worth ten others.
From my experience, introducing an incentive scheme to motivate your people backed up with a well thought out marketing exercise is most likely to produce the results you need. Of course, there is nothing wrong with having a long term strategy that includes several short term campaigns. Just make sure your sales people are rewarded accordingly.
If I was in the US I would love to help you! Good luck...
Feb 13, 2016
They have to be developed together. A marketing strategy should lead to more sales opportunities. If it doesn't then it will be a problem at the company level. Ask yourselves the questions regarding opportunity generation. What specific marketing activities lead to more sales? It cannot me separate
Feb 16, 2016
Hi Rema,
One way to make sure everyone in the organization especially sales and marketing is to make their incentive plans on corporate goals. It is amazing when compensation is tied to making people work together, how fast they figure it out on their own.
Good luck,
Jim
Feb 13, 2016
Rema,
I Suggest a business plan with a portion set up that deal with your long term marketing plan Vision Statement, Mission Statement, and set up a marketing driven company under the tripod of employees, customers and profits keeping the tripod balanced as best you can..... A Score counselor will help you with all these issues...
Then sales people must understand and sign off on the marketing strategy, vision, mission, business plan,------The short term part of your sales strategy is start taking your long term message out to the field and generate interest....
Aligning expectations personal and organizational in line.....
Feb 13, 2016
Here's an article I wrote on a closely related topic: http://www.pjmconsult.com/index.php/2012/07/is-your-tech-business-marketing-or-sales-driven.html
Feb 17, 2016
Hi
Even when mail marketing objectives could be long term, and sales objectives are in some cases short term, there is always room to alignment, and they should be aligned.
In my opinion, there should be a strategic plan above marketing and sales plan, something covering the overall strategy, probably including other areas, like logistics, distribution, operations, post sales services, finances...
If you manage to design this overall strategy, your different departments could be able to state how they will help to reach this strategy.
You can promote alignment with meetings, of course, as some others have suggested. I recommend you to make a strategy map where you can show the strategy vectors your company will run. If you manage to explain your people they are working through collaborative teams towards a major strategic achievement, you will get closer to alignment and also could prevent business silos.
There is an interesting tool, I think it is coming from Balanced Scorecard philosophy, it is called impact matrix.
It's a double entry table, you can put your objectives in row header and your initiatives (marketing and sales) in column header, and check which initiatives will drive impact in objectives. All of your initiatives / project should make real impact into your objectives, otherwise something is wrong. And people should be aware about what objectives they are engaging into a major plan when they work on short term actions.
Best regards,
Guillermo
Feb 17, 2016
Perhaps my thoughts are all wet but if I were doing it I would rip up what you have done and start over.
First off I would do a vision statement. It helps to define who you are and who you want to be.
Then I would redo the marketing strategy. It needs to be more than get established and collect email addresses. It meeds to be precise, measurable and with the time frame defined. I probably wouldn't even use the name "long term marketing strategy" I would call it something like long term operating plan or long term goals. Then I would look more at setting defined goals such as Sales in 1 year of $ 200,000, 100 regular customers and 6 sub dealers for the maple syrup and products. A mailing list of 250. Then work out the goals for each of the next 4 years. Perhaps at year 5 something likes sales of 1.5 million, 25 sub dealers, and a mailing list of 3000.
Then I would work on y short term sales strategy but I would call it a marketing plan. Break down those numbers. For sales of $ 200,000 work out the sales you need for each month, For 6 sub dealers you need to add one every 2 months for the mailing list you need to add just over 20 per month. Then I would sit down and decide what i need to do in what time from to accomplish those goals. For example for adding one sub dealer every two months you may have to contact 10 people to get one sub dealer so you would need to plan to contact 5 prospects a month. Work out what steps you need to get the monthly quota of email addresses and etc.
Feb 18, 2016
Richard Stern- For the Sales Plan to work you must consider the following:
1. Target customer
2. Your company place in the category of products you are selling
3. Price Point
4. Competition
5. Your message
6. Competition differences
7. Are you a local, national, or international brand
8 Take all the answers and draft the Sales Plan
The Marketing Plan must compliment the Sales Plan:
1. Explain your message to the target Sales Plan customer
2. Detail the Marketing outlets to deliver the message
3. Create a budget
4. Develop "Audit" procedures to see the impact of the Marketing plans on the business
5. The Plan must have a start date and end date.
Good Luck