Quarterly Survey Highlights Lack of Alignment Between B2B Sales and
Marketing Teams
INCLINE VILLAGE, Nev. – October 3, 2012 – Corporate Visions, Inc., the
leading sales and marketing messaging company, today announced the results
of its third quarter survey on marketing and sales alignment, which polled
more than 730 business-to-business (B2B) sales and marketing professionals
worldwide. The findings highlight the lack of collaboration between the
sales and marketing teams of industry-leading companies as they work to
differentiate their solutions in today’s marketplace. In fact, a staggering
one in three respondents reported that their message creation process is
non-collaborative, politically charged or nonexistent.
To delve deeper into the issue of marketing and sales alignment, and
determine exactly where the disconnect between teams is occurring, Corporate
Visions posed survey questions about messaging, content and tools
development within organizations. Notable findings from the Q3 survey
include:
. Message creation process is non-collaborative – The responses revealed
that one-third of respondents’ companies have a collaborative process for
creating messages that involves both the sales and marketing teams;
one-third have a process that is non-collaborative, politically charged or
nonexistent; and one-third have a process that is semi-collaborative. This
means a whopping two-thirds of the companies represented in the survey are
struggling to achieve a truly collaborative process for message development.
By operating in distinct silos, marketing runs the risk of creating messages
that will fail to effectively reach customers, and by extension, that
salespeople are not comfortable delivering or will not use.
. Field sales representatives are left out – Respondents indicated that, of
the professionals involved in messaging/tool creation, field sales
representatives constitute only 37 percent of the room, compared to
marketing associates, which represented 54 percent. Because field sales
representatives are essential to ensuring that relevant messages are
delivered to customers, these statistics – which indicate that they are
rarely involved in the creation process – are alarming.
. Messaging and sales tools are created by accident – A meager three percent
of respondents said their company uses a repeatable process when creating
content, messages and tools across the enterprise. The implications of these
results are that most messaging and tools created to support sales teams are
done more by accident than on purpose, and enterprises are risking
inconsistent and diluted messages.
“The results of this quarter’s survey indicate that while some organizations
are taking steps to better align sales and marketing, many continue to
operate in inefficient silos,” said Tim Riesterer, chief strategy and
marketing officer, Corporate Visions. “Enterprises need to employ a
cross-functional framework for message development where marketing and sales
work together to create messaging that resonates with customers. The
repeatable framework should begin with identifying the customer’s main
goals, then pinpoint how these goals are at risk. These risks will redefine
the customer’s needs that only your solution/service can meet, which in turn
will help you create new, effective messages and tools for any campaign.”
For more details on the survey findings, watch this short video.
http://www.brainshark.com/cvi/Q3Report
