“Short cuts make long delays.” ― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
In recent conversations with CEOs, marketing executives and sales leaders of technology companies, one of the topics that often comes up is the ever-increasing insight that marketing automation, CRM and sales enablement solutions provide. Technology has certainly become an ally in opening up the conversation between sales, marketing and the C-suite in the past 26 years I have been in technology marketing and management.
With the increasing sophistication of software and Saas solutions, sales and marketing have become distinctly more measurable and, as a result, more accountable to each other – as it should be. However, technology should not replace the cadence and content of *real*, meaningful conversations between sales and marketing. The conversation provides the context; technology fuels the conversation.
In short: Technology and data enable the conversation between sales and marketing. They do not *replace* the conversation between sales and marketing.
I’ll be talking with more companies and executives over the coming weeks about what effective, powerful sales and marketing alignment looks like (hint: what technology solutions they use does not constitute the whole answer!); how sales and marketing collaborate and communicate with customers and internal/external constituents; processes for driving action from sales and marketing data, both internally and externally; and how their results might improve with enhanced alignment.
Which companies are doing a great job aligning sales and marketing to maximize revenues?
Resonate 