Close Collaboration Ensures Go-to-Market Success

A survey conducted by Chief Outsiders among mid-market companies found that nearly one-third of C-suite executives noted a misalignment between their Sales and Marketing teams. Further, only one-third of that group reported that their Sales and Marketing teams were working toward a common set of goals.

This underscores the importance of making sure Sales and Marketing are aligned through all stages of the customer’s buying journey.  It’s also critical to have ongoing check-ins and reviews on progress towards goals, shortfalls and overall areas for improvement to ensure the teams stay aligned and optimize outcomes.

Working closely with my CSO and CRO counterparts has been a hallmark of my career since I first became a CMO. Over the course of my 6x CMO tenures, I’ve found new and better ways of working hand-in-hand with my counterparts to ensure mutual success for our teams and, most importantly, the company.

Top 10 Best Practices:

• During annual planning and/or quarterly business reviews, ensure that Sales and Marketing are using the same set of numbers. It’s okay to have different perspectives and hypotheses on trends, but having a single source of truth on the data is essential.
• Create a GTM team structure that bridges any separate functions. Whether Sales, Marketing and Services report to one C-Suite executive or not, it's critical to ensure that alignment is solidified around key initiatives, resources, budgets and investments.
• Conduct weekly reviews. It's a mistake to think that quarterly business reviews are sufficient to assess and improve go-to-market success. I have found that a weekly meeting with representatives for pipeline creation, progression and close (including sales BDR's, RevOps, Marketing, etc.) is essential to optimize performance.
• Creating adequate pipeline. While pipeline source and attribution are important, especially in determining the most efficient and effective pipeline generation programs and tactics, it’s best to join hands in pursuit of creating adequate pipeline to support the business. Too often attribution can become a finger pointing exercise of imprecision rather than a learning opportunity to improve overall GTM success.
• Align on a common set of metrics to ensure that collectively the team has a pulse on the business and can make rapid adjustments to continually improve performance.
• Publish performance metrics and review together on a weekly basis and conduct an in-depth review on a monthly basis.
• Track the key performance metrics, I've also found that the industry benchmark-based metrics contained in the B2B Performance Index are accurate, predictive (i.e., leading and lagging indicators) and have a very strong correlation to future performance.
• Plan Marketing and Sales budgets together. This is a key area to get right. It's important to agree on how best to allocate resources and how to adjust over time to maximize results.
• Align compensation plans and objectives. While Marketing is more often measured on MBO's or KPI's versus variable compensation, which is common for Sales, their objectives should tie closely to Sales objectives to ensure that they are working together for a common purpose and agreed-upon outcomes.
• When encountering obstacles to alignment, whether functions are working at cross purposes or just have different priorities, it is critical to bring all groups together and agree on the best resolution for mutual and enduring success.

In more challenging economies like this one, it’s more important than ever to align Sales and Marketing and work closely to set shared goals, track progress and optimize outcomes for mutual success!

If you’d like a free assessment and performance diagnostic, or to find out more how Chief Outsiders and our 120+ battle-tested CSOs and CMOs can help, please reach out.