Posted by Christine on July 1, 2011 under Uncategorized | 
In this episode of the the B2B Specialists podcast Chris Herbert of Mi6 interviews me. Get yourself a cup of coffee, tea or something stronger and enjoy the interview.
NOTE: There may be a 30-60 second commercial that precedes the interview
00:01 We learn a bit about Christine’s experience, background and her research and successes on sales and marketing alignment. Christine believes that B2B marketing is at a key junction in its evolution within companies.
02:40 Christine identifies key symptoms and causes of misalignment. They include: lack of understanding of how customers buy and want to be marketed to, obsession with internal alignment of functional groups and internal conflict caused by zero sum game budgets.
6:45 We turn the conversation to the role CEOs have to play to ensure sales and marketing alignment can be achieved. It’s a combination of past experience, culture and accountability. (For a post on this topic see below)
10:45 Christine describes the three stages companies go through in the journey to marketing and sales alignment. Knowing what stage a company is in helps determine what they need to do in order to move the needle to alignment. She uses “all hands meetings” as an example activity and when it’s best used in the alignment process. (For a post on this topic see below)
16:46 We move the conversation metrics. This was very interesting because Christine talks about what an aligned organization should be measuring. She talks about measuring end-to-end conversions, revenue diversity and outcome profitability (versus product profitability). Marketing needs to promote, communicate and position brands and solutions to specific outcomes. I’d like to explore this with Christine in another podcast because it’s very interesting. Marketing is at an important crossroad in today’s B2B organizations.
22:25 We talk about what Christine has planned next for her sales and marketing alignment research and how’s she is helping companies achieve alignment.
Related Posts:
Why CEOs Can’t Blame Marketing or Sales for Lack of Alignment
The 3 steps to marketing and sales alignment
Three Metrics to Measure Sales and Marketing Alignment
Marketing, Lead Generation and Selling to CIOs
Inside the Mind of the B2B Tech Buyer
Chris Herbert is the founder of Mi6. Mi6 is a B2B (Business to Business) marketing and business development agency dedicated to helping companies build their brands and develop commercial relationships. He is the founder of ProductCamp Toronto and the Hi-tech community Silicon Halton. He tweets under the handle @B2Bspecialist.
Tags: alignment, article, B2B marketing, B2B specialist, Chris Herbert, CMO, Crandell, customer experience, expert, interview, marketing, marketing operations, marketing rules, marketing strategies, podcast, revenue, sales, sales & marketing alignment, strategy, webinar
Posted by Christine on March 5, 2011 under Uncategorized |
Sales and marketing leaders come in all types of personalities and leadership styles. Figuring out what ‘makes them tick’ and how to get them to effectively work together is critical. The reality is that sales and marketing disciplines are very different – Sales is focused on the ‘now’, whereas marketing is concerned with shaping the ‘to be’. And the leadership types for each group are equally different.
Archetype is a useful technique to understand and describe different types of personalities based on their behavior. Understanding someone’s archetype not only helps to explain their perspectives but also their motivations and drivers. In the conundrum of sales and marketing alignment, understanding the archetype of both leaders is a critical first step in figuring out to get the two leaders to work better together.
Much has been written about different types of sales leaders and they can be summarized into the three archetypes: Thinker, Blamer and Junkie. Less has been written about marketing leader archetypes. Based on my interviews and decades of experience I came up with three leadership archetypes: Egoist, Strategist and Tactician.
The Egoist’s focus and core competence is branding and shaping mindshare. Their belief is that the more a market knows about the company and its value proposition, the greater the interest in what the company has to offer. A master storyteller, the Egoist has the unique capability to make the story relevant to just about anyone they meet. Charismatic, well spoken, persuasive, and visionary, this marketing leader excels at communicating the vision orally and visually.
As a leader, however, this archetype is often not detailed or process oriented. They delegate management of key marketing activities like demand generation, marketing operations, sales enablement, product marketing and management to subordinates. In the right environment and with a strong team, an Egoist can motivate and galvanize a company to achieve significant things like shaping a new market category, launching a company or product, or being an industry thought leader. Their lack of interest in the details of driving demand or enabling sales becomes a significant barrier in achieving sales and marketing alignment; often to the ire of sales leadership.
The Tactician is directly opposite of the Egoist. This leader is adept at the detailed direction, implementation and control of plans to achieve specific milestones. Every company needs a tactician for without one, or a team of them, marketing doesn’t get done. The Tactician’s focus is primarily on building the ‘marketing engine’ and making sure that all the parts and programs are functioning optimally, in terms of speed and results. With an innate ability to understand all the process steps, status and what the results are, the Tactician is able to spot and quickly correct a program or campaign that is not performing.
This archetype, however, lacks the ability to see the ‘bigger’ picture, spot new emerging trends and rapidly adjust the marketing strategy accordingly. Tacticians can be so focused on perfecting their operations that they are unable to ‘think outside the box’. Unlike the Egoist, the Tactician’s strength is not in evangelizing a new value proposition. Marketing leaders that recognize their tactician tendencies achieve the right balance by retaining strategy consultants or hire these skills to help them identify new trends and threats and develop effective marketing strategies in response. Tacticians are natural partners in sales and marketing alignment as it fits their desire to optimize processes and results. That being said, with this archetype some sales leaders will co-opt marketing to provide the strategic direction that they feel is lacking in Marketing.
The third marketing archetype is the Strategist. This leader effectively balances strategy with tactics. They have a natural ability to look for and at the larger market to understand the dynamics at play and how the company can and does fit in. They are adept at continually evaluating company and market strategy, aligning the two and then actualizing the strategy. Operationalizing market strategy frequently involves other functional groups such as support, operations and sales. The archetype’s view of marketing is distinctly different from that of the Egoist and the Tactician. To them it is not about perfecting the external image of the company or internal programs; rather it is about influencing external market dynamics to position the company for unique opportunities and drive the company to capitalize on them. Their perspective is holistic and decisions are often made in context of external dynamics, company competencies and longer term opportunities.
The Strategist archetype is representative of the new breed of CMOs that are being sought by B2B companies today. To maintain their outside-in, strategic perspective, this archetype delegates program execution to cross functional teams and relies on metrics to manage the results; with the metrics often spanning a company’s demand chain. A challenge of this archetype is maintaining their balanced view of the world. Often, in response to company situations and culture, the Strategist becomes bogged down in tactics. In situations where a sophisticated marketing team and processes are in place this archetype may evolve into an Egoist. The Strategist is a strong proponent of sales and marketing alignment and often a catalyst of alignment.
Which are you?
Posted by Christine on January 23, 2011 under Uncategorized |
Popular consensus was that 2011 would shape up to be a stronger economic year than 2010. The rebound would be firmly established and, as a result, everyone had sugar plums of bigger budgets dancing in their heads. But the facts paint a different story.
The artifacts of planning invade every nook and cranny of the organization and the resulting 2011 budgets are like ‘gifts’; some things you really want and others you hoped you wouldn’t get. Part of the challenge of the annual planning process is that it curiously resembles the legislative process – a large dose of lobbying based on strongly held personal beliefs about the future and a sprinkling of facts. Which brings to mind a favorite Sherlock Holmes (Arthur Doyle) quote, “It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.” (http://www.quotiki.com/quotes/14005)
Marketing is responsible for researching the facts on emerging trends and educating the rest of the management team, well in advance of the formal planning process. By starting out with the facts and having a solid understanding of competitive landscape and company competencies, the company can develop realistic stretch objectives. A good place to start learning the facts is with economic forecasts from various financial and governmental organizations. Then talk to customers and peers, look at the leading indicators of the pipeline, and talk with the analysts.
One data point is Andrew Bartel’s annual tech industry outlook. ( http://www.forrester.com/rb/Research/us_tech_industry_outlook_for_2011/q/id/57258/t/2). His conclusions mirror what I found across numerous other sources.
“2011 will be more challenging for tech vendors than either 2009 or 2010. … But 2011 will be a year in which (B2B) IT buyers will be torn between the negatives of weak revenue growth and potential for renewed recession versus the positives of good profits, ample cash sitting on balance sheets, and the attractions of new Smart Computing and cloud computing solutions.”
If you’re in the software business, Andrew forecasts growth to be above 8%. If one digs into the details by B2B technology and by vertical industry, there are pockets of growth but they need to be carefully chosen.
For B2B marketers, this prognosis mandates a different strategy than many were hoping for. Instead of investing in awareness building, experimentation with new engagement models and leveraging new frictionless ways of selling, the marketing strategy for 2011 becomes focused on building third party validation of value and credibility. Companies will only part with their cash if they have assurances from their peer network that the vendor’s solution ‘delivers as advertised’ and other companies, like them, openly confirm this. Net, net – it’s a safe buy.
Demand generation will be hard won and mostly through promoting industry analyst coverage, awards, product reviews, customer success studies, and ROI calculators, and building trusted relationships mono-on-mono with prospect decision makers. Mindshare building activities focus on customer and partner testimonials, engaging target personas in conversations in social communities, highlighting solution capabilities and directly tying them to tangible results.
2011 B2B marketing winners will be those that bond with their target markets and deliver tangible value – just like we all had to do in 2010.
Tags: 2011, Andrew Bartel, CMO, Crandell, demand generation, Forrester, marketing operations, marketing strategies, new economy, sales, strategy
Posted by Christine on November 4, 2010 under Uncategorized |
What isn’t measured can’t be managed.
That is as true for marketing as it is for any operationalization of business strategy. It’s a sign of maturation in the sales/marketing alignment conversation that so much attention is being focused on the role marketing operations plays. Marketing operations is all about measuring marketing’s impact and discovering the dials to turn in order to optimize results.
But who owns marketing operations? Well, marketing of course. Not exactly.
I don’t support the belief that marketing should own their Ops function anymore than I believe that Sales should own their Ops function. A core premise of sales and marketing alignment is common integrated systems, shared resources and goals. Having separate operations groups, each doing their own analysis of performance, pipeline impact, root cause, etc. opens the door to ’my analysis is more correct than yours’ debate. Two groups battling over whose analysis is correct misses the right conversation that needs to happen – “what is happening to and in the pipeline”. Only by analyzing the pipeline of marketing leads along the same rules as one manages the sales pipeline can you get the whole picture of what’s happening. And how to improve the results along the way. Consolidated operations groups are more effective and cheaper…or maybe I should use the new buzzword…leaner.
I go a step further. The consolidated Operations group shouldn’t report to Marketing or Sales. The group should report to an independent third party. Who? Well, who cares as much if not more about the accuracy of pipeline and performance reporting than Sales or Marketing? Finance. The CFO is responsible for understanding the business and reporting the financial results. The only thing s/he cares about is accuracy and understanding what’s happening to the business. Having marketing and sales accountable to the CFO for how their functions are producing fosters the right conversation about the business. Of course, that assumes your CFO is sales and marketing savvy – most actually are.
Give it a try.
Posted by Christine on July 4, 2010 under Uncategorized |
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.
Tags: alignment, CMO, collaboration, Crandell, creative destruction, demand generation, marketing, marketing strategies, revenue, sales, sales & marketing alignment, strategy
Posted by Christine on March 20, 2010 under Uncategorized |
There used to be a time, before the tech-bubble bust in early 2000, when the route to CEO was through the CMO’s office. The belief was Marketing touched and coordinated all aspects of the business, knew how to build market share and understood how to read the tea leaves of emerging trends. Post tech-bubble, the tables turned and the path to the CEO seat was through sales. Board of directors and venture capitalists believed that Sales touched all aspects of the business, knew the numbers, how to drive revenue, and were on the frontlines of emerging trends. Interestingly, both paths to CEO-ship have not proven to be sure-fire successes. Tech company failures litter roadsides during both downturns unable to get their value proposition, go-to-market strategy and product roadmaps right, in the eyes of the buying customer. What does this have to do with aligning sales and marketing? It could just be the root cause - the smoking gun, so to speak.
I’ve been interviewing a growing number of Board members, CEOs, heads of sales and CMOs of large and small technology companies about sales and marketing alignment. I’m looking for the smoking gun as to why it is so hard to keep these teams aligned. There has to be a reason beyond “different cultures, time horizons, and skills”. While my interviews are not done, some patterns are emerging.
- No one knows how to measure marketing.
Boards and CEO, regardless of their domain expertise, are puzzled as to how to measure marketing. When asked what metrics they use the most frequent response is leads. Yet when probed, it’s not really leads, it’s inquiries. Both groups then lament on how marketing cannot produce quality “leads” and when asked how they fix the situation, the most frequent response is to replace the CMO. The response was the same for those CEOs that rose through sales as well as marketing ranks.
2. SMB tech company marketers aren’t measuring the right things.
There is a big gap between large and small company marketers when it comes to understanding, measuring and managing marketing’s impact on pipeline, business and strategy. Large company CMOs typically have a metrics-based operating mindset. Each one knew, to the minute, what was happening to the pipeline, the funnel and how various marketing activities impact current and future revenue. There were no differences between B2B and B2C large tech companies. The same can’t be said for SMB tech marketers.
3. Marketing doesn’t really have a seat at the Board table
Regardless of whether the company was large or small, CMOs have little to no exposure to Boards and are often left out of key strategic discussions. Board members, on the other, drew a blank on what key questions to ask CMOs to evaluate marketing’s value add and contribution. When pressed, marketing was described as a ‘black box’ and something companies are ‘suppose to have’. Which explains the zero sum marketing/sales budgeting situation prevalent in so many companies.
4. Sales knows they are king of the hill.
In just about every case, the CEO and the board decides in favor of Sales. Whether it’s taking funds from marketing to add more sales people, supporting some ‘creative’ sales models, letting sales dictate marketing programs, or letting sales get away with dysfunctional and organizationally destructive behavior – the CEO is betting his job, and bonus, on the sales leader. No wonder alignment is hard to institutionalize. In companies where there was alignment, it was the result of a partnership between sales and marketing leadership and grass roots adoption.
5. Boards and CEOs could not define “sales and marketing alignment”
Everyone wanted it, felt they had some degree of it but darn if they could articulate what it meant. And that meant they could not quantify what lack of alignment was costing them in lost revenue, market share, customer dissatisfaction and bottom-line profit.
I’m not sure if I found the smoking gun but the powder burns are there and something is smoldering. Bottom-line is that if companies are going to benefit from alignment, CEOs and Boards need to get with the program. They can no longer hide behind Sales, they have to educate themselves on how to measure marketing.
Tags: alignment, automated lead management, CEO, CMO, Crandell, demand generation, leadership, marketing, marketing strategies, sales, sales & marketing alignment, sales psychology, strategy
Posted by Christine on January 31, 2010 under Uncategorized |
The need to do more with less, faster has brought sales and marketing to figure out how to work better together. There is antidotal evidence that over one-third of all B2B companies starting talking about improving their sales and marketing alignment in the middle of last year. Most of the talk is around lead management - how to get more leads and sales to follow them up. And there are the inevitable side conversations about marketing or sales leadership and if it is time for a change. These are all good conversations as it means people are open-minded to change on some level.
Much has been written about the signs of misalignment but little on what sales and marketing alignment really means. We all bandy about the term, sales & marketing alignment, assuming a widely accepted definition exists that all understand and subscribe to. I haven’t found one, have you? What I have found is that ‘alignment’ means different things to different people based on their orientation to the problem. For many sales leaders (not all) and technology solution vendors it means anything from automated lead management, sales force automation to marketing delivering higher quality leads. Some CEOs think sales & marketing alignment means they’ve stopped bickering, marketing is delivering more leads or that sales is finally following up on the leads that marketing gave them. Consultants lump into ‘alignment’ anything from developing outbound campaigns, improving product marketing to sales operations and leadership coaching. And to most marketers, it means whatever it takes to get Sales off their backs and to regain some level of credibility and clout within the organization.
If we’re going to improve sales & marketing alignment through best practices, we need a comprehensive definition that we all can work with. I’ve scanned a large number of sales, marketing and leadership books and have yet to find a succint, comprehensive and balanced definition. Most take the position that misalignment is marketing’s fault. In eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale, Ardath says “marketing stands to reap huge benefits….by aligning with sales.” (page 175). Ardath’s book is an excellent for a long list of other reasons. However, we need a definition that reflects alignment as the mutual responsibility of marketing and sales. Christopher Ryan gets closer to that in his book How to Create an Unstoppable Marketing & Sales Machine where he defines it as ”synchronizing the marketing and sales functions …with a service level agreement (that) outlines the duties and objectives of each department.”
I’ve put a stake in the ground and defined sales & marketing alignment at a higher, more strategic level:
“Sales and marketing collaboratively working toward the common goal of profitably increasing revenue and customer excellence through shared processes, resources and metrics.”
What does this definition say? Alignment is more than just leads. At the heart of alignment the two teams are working toward the same goal with a common understanding of resources. Companies achieve this through a three stage journey that integrates activities, processes and team structures and reinforce alignment with a culture that emphasizes shared accountability and institutionalizes it with common technology platforms.
What do you think? Do you agree and how would you improve my definition?
Tags: alignment, ardath ablee, automated lead management, christopher ryan, CMO, collaboration, Crandell, demand generation, fusion marketing, Laura Ramos, marketing, marketing campaign, marketing council, marketing strategies, marketo, revenue, sales, sales & marketing alignment, sales psychology, strategy
Posted by Christine on January 14, 2010 under Uncategorized |
Over the past months I’ve gotten to know the folks at Marketo and their concept of revenue cycle optimization. At a high level, it’s about tightening the processes and feedback loops in attracting, acquiring, collecting and expanding sales opportunities. Marketo delivers automation technology for the attracting and acquiring part of the process or more commonly known as “the funnel and pipeline”. Higher quality leads from marketing, and more of them, translates into more sales to ‘ideal’ target customers. Lead generation and lead management is largely the result of an engine. The more finely-tuned an engine is, and fed with high quality fuel, the better the engine will perform.
Improving marketing’s lead engine is part technology, people and process. Start with making sure your processes are optimized. The lead generation processes of most marketing departments are like swiss cheese. There are typically holes in target databases, gaps in how leads are nurtured, and handed off scored leads to inside sales, business development, or sales. Leakage is what Laura Ramos of Forrester calls these holes; I call them lost revenue. Walk a set of actual inquiries through all of the steps to see where the holes, gaps and bubbles are. Then close-up and fine-tune the processes. Now you’re ready for automation technology. And don’t forget training, the people part. You can have the greatest processes and technology but if people don’t incorporate them into their daily jobs or care about the accuracy of data that’s being entered, you’ll have expensive lost revenue.
Getting to know Jon Miller and the Marketo team has invigorating and informative. I’m hooked on Marketo and see it as a key piece of sales and marketing alignment. Let’s be clear though - automation is not a substitute for going through the alignment process. It is, however, a powerful enabler. But I digress… into another article. One result of getting to know Jon was an invitation to be interviewed for his blog. What had a great time and I appreciated his thoughtful questions. Check out the interview at Marketo’s B2B Marketing blog and the other blogs that are taking the conversation further.
Tags: alignment, automated lead management, CMO, Crandell, demand generation, Forrester, Laura Ramos, marketing, marketing campaign, marketing strategies, marketo, sales, sales & marketing alignment, strategy
Posted by Christine on December 9, 2009 under Uncategorized |
In 1942, Joseph Schumpeter introduced the economic concept of creative destruction. He theorized that radical innovation triggers transformation in economies as well as companies. Innovation is the force that sustains long term economic growth even as it destroys the value of established companies. This is an apt description of what is happening to marketing today. Social media, interactive marketing, revenue cycle optimization, and innovation management are radical innovations triggering the wholesale transformation of marketing.
Couple that with an expansion of marketing’s scope and a groundswell to resolve, for once and for all, the sales and marketing mis-alignment, marketing’s transformation offers tremendous opportunities and hardships, just as Schumpeter had popularized.
Marketing’s transformation is rooted in how the function is managed. Unpredictability is the rule which demands a constant stream of innovative activites, and results, executed with uber efficiency and flexibility. Navigating this requires that marketing be managed and measured differently. The CMO’s KPIs need to reflect the function’s new scope and measure what matters – revenue growth, quality of customer lifecycle relationship, reputation and effectiveness of strategy. And those KPIs need to cascade down the marketing organization and be aligned with sales’ KPIs.
This is a critical time for marketing. CMOs need to lead their company through this transformation with an inspired vision, gutsy and decisive leadership, fact-based decision making and a laser focus on how to drive constant revenue growth or marketing risks becoming a dirty word. I’ve had several recent conversations with top notch marketers who are banning the word ‘marketing’ and ‘rebranding’ their functions into revenue-related words. This trend threatens the real opportunity from the creative destruction. The real opportunity is to transform marketing into the company’s center point of constituent life cycle understanding by continuously creating meaningful value, however constituents define ‘value’.
Posted by Christine on October 24, 2009 under Uncategorized |
Those who hold the Chief Marketing Officer, or CMO, title also carry a dubious distinction: They occupy the C-level executive post with the shortest tenure. To a great extent, the position’s limited life span results from the fact that what was once primarily a circumscribed branding function has ballooned into a diversified strategic and operational role. In addition to traditional market planning and communications, today’s CMOs are often responsible for sales management, product development, channel management, public relations, market research, and customer service — a broad assortment of specialties, some of which used to report into other areas of the organization…..
That’s the beginning of my latest article which was published at CMO.com. Check it out at http://bit.ly/1LtiU2 and let me know what you think.
Tags: article, CMO, Crandell, employment tenure, expert, marketing, new corporate landscape, new economy, sales, strategy, success