Lessons From The Aligned
Posted by Christine on July 4, 2010 under Uncategorized | 
5 Comments to Read
In the quest to find companies that know how to keep sales and marketing aligned, I interviewed a handful for truly remarkable CEOs. They aren’t gracing the cover of business publications, keynoting conferences or running for government office. They are remarkable in their achievements and their perspectives are a breath of fresh air. From them I found a consistent pattern in how they kept alignment in place – a clear company strategy, open collaboration and a company-wide implemented (and honored) accountability process. Interestingly, for them alignment wasn’t just about sales and marketing, it was about aligning all the corners of the business into one cohesive fabric.
The size of the company didn’t matter; what separated this group from the non-aligned companies was the background of the CEO. They had careers in both marketing and sales, coming up through the ranks in large companies before taking leadership positions with smaller organizations. They had learned the value of strategy the hard way along with the value of being very disciplined in their roles. My conversations with them were déjà vue and reminiscent of my days as a strategy consultant.
A few lessons I learned from this handful of unique CEOs are:
- Alignment is like marriage. Any relationship needs to be constantly invested in and managed. For it to work you should strive to ‘get back’ what you put into the relationship. The CEOs had a goal that marketing and sales have a 50/50 relationship. Give 50 percent into the relationship and get that much back; a persistent imbalance will ultimately lead to non-alignment.
- Attack the process; not the people. Alignment is a process that rapidly acts on the measuring of what you manage. Each CEO had a sound, complete and proven process for evergreening executable company strategy, clearly defining critical success factors, instituting measurable and time-bound objectives for every role, and acting on monthly metrics-driven dashboards.
- The CMO is a different breed. These CEOs hire a different type of CMO; a keeper of the company’s Intellectual Property, trusted strategy advisor, and germinator of new ideas. They hire that rare CMO who knows how to balance strategy with execution and understands all the variables of a running a business, and isn’t afraid to get their hands dirty; very dirty.
- Measureable objectives must cascade. It’s all about purposeful execution to a plan that is realistic given the circumstances of the company and environment. Each objective is clearly defined on a quarterly basis in measurable terms and cascaded fully down the organization. All these MBOs not only add up to the top-level objectives BUT are publicly shared; as are the monthly results. Transparency drives not only alignment but accountability.
- Communication is beginning of understanding. Marketing’s internal customer is sales and sales have an obligation to tell marketing what it needs, in specifics. Open lines of communication around resources, priorities, results (good and bad) and desires help to build understanding of what is possible relative to the strategy. Only then can everyone reach a common consensus on what resources to dedicate to which action plans.
For these CEOs, strategy was not lip-service or a consulting project with a head-liner consultant. It was a roadmap from ‘here to there’ that removes ambiguity but keeps the essence of agility and creativity. Getting everyone on the same page was hard, mostly because the art of strategy has been lost over the years and today’s organizations are commitment-phobic. Once there, however, each organization gave a sigh of relief – the game, the rules, the prize and the road was clear. And they realized that they actually had more control than before – and the results proved that out.
Paul Mosenson said,
Hi,
Just found your blog courtesy of Rod Sloane. I look forward to reading more about the sales/marketing alignment issues. On this day and age, if we can treat websites as “salespeople” rather than online brochures, sales and operations would have a different perspective on the marketing role and hopefully can integrate with more resolve. Content marketing, social media, and marketing automation all seem to be marketing tasks, yet the final outcome is quality leads, more closes, and more revenue per deal, and that speaks to sales!
Carol Schultz said,
Christine,
Just found your post on a LinkedIn group we share. You and I are certainly on the same page and I’m delighted to see your interviews have confirmed everything I’ve experienced and now “preach”. Alignment is getting to be big business. The problem is that alignment, in and of itself, will not fix recruitment and retention issues. I’d love to explore this more with you.
John Sweeney said,
Hi Christine,
I’m an alignment missionary working the streets of London. Let’s say there are plenty of unaligned souls to save in my corner of the world.
I’ve come to value your insights of late. For my own understanding – do you think alignment initiatives begin with the CEO? I encounter lots of organisations that need help but Marketing doesnt want to admit the problem, Sales is reluctant to give time to ‘alignment’ initiatives. Your CEO’s and keeping alignment in place but who (in your experience) starts the journey?
John Sweeney
Director | Biz-Builders
http://biz-builders.co.uk/
Christine said,
Hi John and Carol. Thanks for the comments. I don’t think alignment must begin with the CEO but that person must support the effort. The odds of success are higher if the CEO understands and supports alignment. Having said that, alignment requires sales and marketing to admit there is a problem. Carol raises an interesting point about recruitment and retention. If the CMO doesn’t see the problem or isn’t willing to work on alignment, then retention of top talent will be an issue. Same thing with a Blamer sales leader.
Christine
JOHN A GELMINI said,
Marketing and sales alignment are really only possible if the person with overall reponsibility for sales and marketing activities is also responsible for those who are tactically in charge.
The functions should be looked at in process,operational and strategic terms as part of an integrated whole which should in turn be part of a constantly evolving target operating model incorporating marketing ,sales,operations,IT,software,telephony,marketing channels,people,risk,finance,service standards,customer service and change.
In most UK companies sales and marketing as well as the other functions sit in separate silos which in turn become empires or fiefdoms each trying to outdo the other or curry favour with the CEO.
Things like CRM/CDI/MDM help,as does salesforce automation in larger companies with call centres and geographically dispersed salesforces.
However it is in the hearts and minds of people that the barriers really have to be broken down so that lofty marketing objectives can be aligned to on the ground realities within salesforces.
This requires communication which is two way and meaningful.
Similarly marketing and operations need to communicate so that operational capacity is not overstretched and sales needs to communicate with manufacturing and vice versa so that order intake achieved by sales does not exceed manufacturing capacity.
Finance needs to be involved too if necessary by raising prices to bring sales into line with capacity in good times and lowering them when times are bad in order to bring sales up to capacity.
This is what the budget airlines do and in a slightly different way budget hotels such as Travelodge.
The secret as I have found for many clients over the years is to build agility into the model which should also be futureproofed so that sudden pressures and the unexpected can be catered for without disruption and at speed.
Trust this helps
JOHN
(JOHN A GELMINI)
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