Heyo!
I was encouraged to share my tips for marketing-sales alignment, so here they are! This recently came to light with the alignment of lead statuses that would be shared across three sales teams with three [very differnent] sales processes. Some of these principles are largely influenced by leadership training and insights from our People Development team.
- Gather Intel | Listen
- People want to be heard.
- Listen and fully understand the current process before making changes.
- You may learn a necessary addition to your proposed change.
- You need to be able to explain the current process [almost] better than they can.
- Side note: this is also the notice of “hey, we’re exploring this change for the future”
- Pool of Shared Meaning (adapted from Crucial Conversations)
- Give the explanation of why you’re proposing change.
- The change/improvement… benefits business operations, enables your team to better support the sales team, saves everyone time in the long run, opens the door to better reporting, etc…
- Too often Ops roles often start with the change then say why it matters. Start with why to gain buy-in and shared intent, then move to what/how.
- Offer Opportunity for Changes and Set Expectations
- People feel immediately bought-in when a suggestion they have impacted the final decision.
- At least, give the sales team the opportunity to offer feedback. Gather specific feedback, and later explain why you did/didn’t adopt the change.
- Plus, later down the road when someone may [inevidiably] claim they didn’t have a say in the matter, you can point to this for reference.
- Documentation
- We all know of setting an expectation/process, only to review [or police] the process down the road when it’s not being done.
- Documentation and sign off is your failsafe. It’s a reference to point back to when talking to a leader about why we do things this way, when and why we agreed to this process, etc.
Common theme? communication.
Got any Q’s? Let me know in the comments. These principles worked for my team, and I hope they work for you. I understand not all businesses and coworkers are the same, but I wish you the best for marketing-sales alignment!
Looking for a sales/marketing/ops role? Our company is hiring in Denver, Birmingham, Chicago, and remote across the US! Send me a message on LinkedIn.