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Encourage your teams for more business!

The essentials of Sales &

Marketing Alignment

Visit us at dink.eu

d!NK – empowering your sales force to outperform

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“Investing in better and more useful technologies is critical for sales to move more quickly and effectively on the leads

that marketing can uncover” - Jenny Cermak (McKinsey & Company)

Put the “and” back in Sales and Marketing.

“ Companies with ‘dynamic, adaptable sales & marketing processes’ reported an

average of 10% more sales people on-quota compared to other companies ”

- CSO insights

“84% of best in class companies choose to give marketing access to the CRM ”

- Aberdeen.com 1

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About the author

Kenny is Marketing manager at d!NK. He joined the company in its early days. Passionate about marketing and digital communication, Kenny keeps the pulse on d!NK’s market. He is in daily contact with d!NK’s customers and prospects to understand their sales interactions and detect opportunities for d!NK to improve the sales effectiveness. Kenny translates this knowledge into the evolution of the d!NK product and is a profilic contributor to blog posts and demos that demonstrate the value of d!NK. An enterpreneur at heart, Kenny founded his webdesign agency in 2006 while still at school.

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Table of Contents 1. Introduction

2. Speak the same language

3. The Sales & Marketing Waterfall

4. Measure & optimize

5. How d!NK can help

6. Get in touch

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1

Introduction

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Why should you read this? This eBook will guide you through the essentials of aligning sales and marketing. It is never easy to create alignment between these two planets. Believe me, I know it’s a true challenge. Most part of this eBook is written from own experience, summarized to the true essential and written down for everyone who has an interest in this matter. Why should you introduce this in your company? What I have experienced is that a lot of leads are lost because of poor communication. Introducing a clear alignment can help to reduce the loss of important leads and help both sales and marketing to work together.

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Introduction

Think about leads and how they’re treated in your company. If sales and marketing are not aligned, how can you ensure a seamless buying experience?

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Speak the same language

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Are the leads any good? A business drives on leads. However, not all leads are equal. Sales people know well that a warm lead translates into business, a cold lead is a first step in a long journey to revenue and that interest is often mistaken for willingness to buy. Lead qualification is about assessing if an interested lead translates into willingness to buy. So it’s very important that both sides have the same perspective when it comes to “a lead” and when dealing with critical concepts like a “sales-ready lead”.

“These are the Glengarry leads, and to you they are gold. But you don’t get them. Why? Because giving them to you is like trowing them away. They’re for closers only!”

Quote from the movie: Glengarry Glenn Ross

Speak the same language

”38% of CMOs say that aligning and integrating sales & marketing is a top priority for 2014” (CMO Council)

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Start by asking both teams to answer the following questions: • What is a qualified lead? • What are the scoring rules for a qualified lead? • How do they define the various stages for developing

leads?

Often the sales team and marketing team will answer these questions in very different ways, but discussion will show that a marketing lead and a sales lead are actually two sides of the same (golden) coin.

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At d!NK we use S.C.O.T.S.M.A.N to qualify leads. These 8 criteria will determine the quality of any lead. Discover more …

Speak the same language

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Single customer picture. Make sure both teams are on the same page when talking about “a customer”. To achieve this, stick the marketing and sales heads together and gather information from own experience (=common interests). The mutual insight allows your marketing and sales teams to share a common definition of your “ideal customer” and makes it easier to create campaigns around common goals. Define the goals and stick to it. You are now targeting specific customers! Examples of common goals: • Commission on the amount of qualified leads and the

amount of deals closed • Monthly sales competitions • Bonusses when hit ratio rises • Faster lead handling • More online demonstrations

Speak the same language

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Customer Dynamics terminology. Now that both teams have the same perspective of customers at various stages of engagement, continue with other common definitions to make sure your communication proceeds effectively. Consider the following definitions to make sure sales and marketing are on the same page: • Lead Scoring: Define what actions or behaviors

determine the quality of a lead. This can be accomplished with lead scoring tools that assign points for lead engagement in online and offline touch points.

• Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL): When marketing passes over leads to sales, both teams need to agree on the scoring criteria to qualify as MQL. Processes need to be put in place to make sure these leads are passed on to sales with all information on previous engagement.

• Sales Qualified Leads (SQL): Assign the right definition of a SQL and what determines this. Know what actions are to be taken when a lead is marked as sales qualified.

• Opportunity: Define the different stages of an opportunity and when sales can declare one. Define the follow-up procedure so it becomes clear for everyone how to handle opportunities.

Speak the same language

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3

Communication is key

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Communication is key

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The importance of communication. Now both teams have the right terminology and understanding. Now you need to make sure there is a good communication between sales and marketing. This is extremely important when it comes to the next phase of alignment: Closed Loop Reporting.

Closed Loop Reporting. Closed Loop Reporting is the way sales and marketing deal with the conversion process from an unknown visitor to a sale, based on statistical data. Think about the following:

When your sales team receives a lead from marketing, it’s important for sales to communicate to marketing how the process of turning the lead into a sale went. By doing this marketing can identify the best lead source and use it more frequently in online campaigns. Equally important is communication about a lead that did not convert into a sale. This is a good opportunity for marketing to investigate the context and learn to improve the conversion rate.

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4

The Sales & Marketing Waterfall

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The Sales & Marketing waterfall

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Define the S&M Waterfall. It often appears to be a problem: sales and marketing organizations are not using the same lead pipeline. Non-aligned lead pipelines keep sales and marketing on their own planet. Make sure you set up a pipeline that fits both worlds.

It all starts with a visitor using multiple marketing channels such as: inquiries, registrations, downloads, etc. These contacts are converted to marketing leads. If the lead is qualified, it can be turned directly into a sales qualified lead, or a SQL. If more information is needed, the lead will go into a lead nurturing programme. Whenever sales has the concrete possibilities and requests of the SQL, they will create an opportunity for them, which hopefully will lead to sales.

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Conclusion With a single pipeline, sales and marketing understand how each stage in the process works and why each is important to the business. d!NK can help businesses to accomplish this S&M waterfall by enabling both sides to have greater visibility into each others world.

The Sales & Marketing waterfall

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Measure & optimize

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Measure & optimize

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The trickiest part Now you know how to align your sales and marketing teams. The next and last step is to guarantee this alignment. Commonly defined agreements (CDA) help to define the relationship between your sales and marketing organizations. These agreements will hold both sides accountable for their commitments, which will be the trickiest part of the whole process. Setting up CDAs. The easiest way is to begin with a set of agreed-upon performance metrics. This can be anything you want, for example: • Acceptable follow-up delay • Acceptable conversion percentages • Quantify minimum number of monthly leads Next, set up a series of targets for both sides, this helps you to guarantee the alignment without needing to interfere every week.

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• Define common targets / goals: Important is to measure both teams on the same metric. • For example: if you measure marketing on the number of MQL

they provide to sales, you should measure the MQL sales turned into customers as well. This will tell you the number of leads marketing is passing over and their quality.

• Define common benefits: Point out the benefits the teams have by communicating with each other and make clear what could be achieved if sales talked to marketing after a sale has been made • For example: faster conversion rates, better insights that lead

to better results.

• Define occasional (short) meetings: make sure you plan occasional meetings with both teams to discuss what kind of content they like or missing, what information they should give or even to regain the confidence in the aligning process.

Follow up, review & refine. Sales and marketing alignment is a lifetime process for any organization. Take into account that you’ll need to follow up on initiatives, track progress, organize occasional meetings with both teams, to ensure continuous improvement. With an emphasis on shared performance, benefits and metrics, your sales and marketing teams will be more motivated and have a better understanding of each others world to build upon their progress.

Follow up & optimize

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How d!NK can help

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With d!NK you can create tools for enabling sales and marketing alignment.

Better leads = more money

Marketing creates sales tools which sales loves to use. When the focus of sales tools is on interactivity and feedback, marketing gets instant insight from the field. We’ll illustrate 4 tools that result in a more efficient marketing team and a more productive salesteam.

sales tools

scoring tools training tools

administrative tools

“Investing in better and more useful technologies is critical for sales to move more quickly and effectively on the leads that marketing can uncover” - Jenny Cermak (McKinsey & Company)

How d!NK can help

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Gather data and integrate with your CRM system Interact with your customers Automatic generation of customer reports Sign contracts on the spot

Examples of mobile sales tools: - Survey tools - Lead qualification tools - Pitchbooks with process flows - Simulators / calculators

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Sales tools Create your own sales tools to get more insight in the sales conversation.

How d!NK can help

Increase your Sales Qualified Leads

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Generate leads on events Automatic creation of order forms Errorless and hassle-free ordering Automatic creation of visit reports Examples of administrative tools:

- Inventory counting - Order intake tools - Prestation & service tools

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Administrative tools Gone are the days of late evening reports. With d!NK you can create forms for streamlining customer processes and tools for automated ordering and reporting.

Improve your administration

How d!NK can help

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Qualify your customers during the sales conversation Gather online and offline data View and mail content straight from the app

Examples of mobile scoring tools:

- Lead scoring tools - Customer scoring tools - Product & training evaluation

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Scoring tools Structured scoring reduces reporting time and creates a common language to qualify customers.

Improve the way you qualify leads

How d!NK can help

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Train and coach your team(s) wherever you are Set up a library of training tools Get better indication of your teams’ performance Set up onboarding programmes for new employees Examples of mobile training tools:

- Evaluation and benchmark tools - Personal development/achievement tools - Knowledge portal

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Training tools Training tools can help you to get great insights in the knowledge of your team. Whether it is for new employees, new products or even to evaluate trainers.

Increase your team’s performance

How d!NK can help

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No need to relearn. Create those sales tools straight from PowerPoint with the d!NK PowerPoint Plugin, and enable your sales people with the right tools to engage customers, while collecting market insight. Usefull tips & tricks from our blog:

6 ways to become a sales app rockstar 10 tools to improve the sales conversation

Get started right away

Ready to rock?

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7 Get in touch

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Get in touch with us! We’d be happy to further share our experience, On our website you find more examples of interactive sales tools that lead to a better sales and marketing alignment

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