Marketing + Sales: Are They Aligned or in Silos?
We call it the “Silo Effect.” When marketing initiatives are moving in one direction, and the sales team in another. The two departments – both of which are essential to business development – are not aligned by common objectives. I’ve seen this occur with internal marketing departments as well as outside marketing agencies.
I wish I could say it’s an uncommon problem, but I can’t. According to the Content Marketing Institute, “50% of b2b companies rate alignment between marketing and sales teams as fair to poor.”
The outcome is always the same: marketing is not creating opportunities for sales success. And conversely, the sales team is not giving the marketing team any meaningful feedback, so both keep going on their merry way, unfortunately in disparate directions.
Evidence of the “Silo Effect” usually comes from a vocal sales team that expresses dissatisfaction or indifference to the marketing team. They feel that marketing does nothing for them and become increasingly reluctant to support any marketing-related activity or seek marketing assistance. From their perspective, why should they?
Here’s the solution: The ONLY purpose of a b2b marketing department is to develop and deploy initiatives that create or sustain profitable relationships. That means they exist to create new and existing selling opportunities for your sales team; that’s it! They need to understand this explicitly. And your sales team needs to be a supportive partner. That means giving the marketing team feedback and data to help them constantly gauge and improve marketing effectiveness.
Imagine what you could accomplish if you had a marketing team that was 100% aligned with sales, and with your growth agenda. If you’re running into the “Silo Effect,” and want to talk over some doable approaches to solving this problem for your company, feel free to connect.
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