The relationship between sales and marketing can be tense, sometimes downright testy. When the numbers aren’t there, and the CEO is calling, the finger pointing starts and the relationship sours.
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
Eloqua’s Brian Kardon, Chief Marketing Officer, and Alex Shootman, Chief Revenue Officer, get along. They like each other. More importantly, they work together, speak to each other rather than past each other, and keep their teams working in sync.
At Dreamforce 2011, Alex and Brian took a few minutes to discuss how important sales and marketing alignment is to all sales and marketing strategies, and how outperforming companies’ sales and marketing harmony is critical to their revenue success. Check out the video below and feel the love.
Brian Kardon, Chief Marketing Officer, Eloqua: Hi, I’m Brian Kardon. I’m CMO of Eloqua. And I’m here at Dreamforce 2011.
Alex Shootman, Chief Revenue Officer, Eloqua: And I’m Alex Shootman. I’m the Chief Revenue Officer at Eloqua, and I’m also here with Brian at Dreamforce 2011.
Alex: One of the things that’s great for myself and Brian is we don’t actually have to behave like a whole lot of sales and marketing executives behave. Typically, if the CEO comes to the head of sales, which would be me, and he says, “Hey, Alex, I want 20 percent more revenue”, the first thing that I’m going to do is I’m going to say, “Boss, that great. I want more money for more sales (representatives).”
Brian: And what do you think I’m going to tell him? “So, hey, you’re at 20 percent? Give me 20 percent more budget. I’ll buy you more data, we’ll do more campaigns, we’ll do more trade shows – and that’s the way marketing can get more growth.” So that’s the CEO’s dilemma. How’s he solve it?
Alex: And typically when you and I go back in for the board meeting, and the revenue targets weren’t made, what happens? I say, “Well, I hired great sales people, but they just didn’t have anything to work on.” And Brian might say, “Well, I gave him all sorts of leads but he didn’t have any good sales people.” And the CEO is left to wonder, How am I going to drive revenue performance?
Brian: So what’s happened is there’s a small group of companies that are dramatically outperforming their peers. They’re growing much faster; they’re finding a lot more success. It’s because of marketing and sales alignment. And it’s because of RPM – Revenue Performance Management. That’s what we’re here at Dreamforce to talk about.
Alex: And here’s what those companies understand. They understand that fundamentally the buying cycle has changed; the buyer’s in control. And you have to sales and marketing aligned. And the only way to do that is to provide executives one view of the truth about the operations of sales and marketing, benchmark it, and then take prescribed actions to grow revenue. And that is what Eloqua is doing for these great companies and that is what Revenue Performance Management is all about.
(Disclosure: Eloqua and salesforce.com have a variety of customer/vendor, sponsorship and other arrangements between the two companies.)
