00:00:01 – Hey everybody, it’s Jenni from GrowthMode Marketing. You’re listening to The Demand Gen Fix, the podcast where our team of GrowthModers and our guests discuss the ins and outs of demand generation and why we believe it’s the key to long-term sustainable growth, especially in the HR tech industry.
00:00:21 – Hello, hello, Deanna here.
00:00:23 – Hi, Greg here today.
00:00:25 – So we are back for the sixth installment of our six-part series on dialing in your marketing and the levers that impact results. Over the past couple of months, we’ve been digging into the 12 levers that our team at GrowthMode Marketing believes need to be dialed in around your marketing effort to optimize results. We’ve covered the first ten over five episodes, and in this episode, which is our sixth and final of the multi-part series, we are wrapping up with the final two levers: marketing and sales alignment, and sales processes.
00:01:02 – While the other levers are more directly owned by the marketing team, these last two go beyond the marketing team to encompass our friends on the sales side. You might be thinking these don’t belong on the list.
00:01:14 – What are you guys thinking? But we believe that we shouldn’t skip talking about these last two levers because, realistically, if you don’t dial this in as well, your organization won’t be optimized for success on the marketing front.
00:01:28 – Right. And hopefully, all of you that are listening to this have had a chance to listen to the other five episodes in the series. We hopped around a little bit with the podcast, so it wasn’t the straight episodes here. Sorry about that. Sometimes we have a good topic to mix in or a guest is only available at a certain time. But if you want to go back and listen to the other episodes, look at episodes 57, 58, 61, 62, and 65, where we talk about the first ten levers. Those levers that we have already talked about, that are part of the 12 levers you need to dial in on your marketing to really optimize the results, are positioning, strategy, budget, scale, contact database, brand awareness, content marketing, marketing tactics, and measurement.
00:02:23 – So as we said, the final two levers of the 12 that we were talking about on this episode are marketing and sales alignment and sales processes. So with that, Greg, let’s jump into talking about marketing and sales alignment.
00:02:39 – With marketing and sales alignment, sometimes we see people running into problems, and these things kind of show up, and you’re like, “How come our leads aren’t that great?” Sales doesn’t really think that marketing understands what they’re trying to do and accomplish. Sometimes, those kinds of things come up as a red flag where sales wants more at-bats, like they need to get in front of more higher-quality people.
00:03:05 – Right? Let’s face it, marketing and sales alignment is not a new thing. A lot of organizations struggle with this, and I think if you went on Google and searched, you’d probably find a million different podcast episodes and content pieces out there that have advice on sales and marketing alignment. One of the reasons that I think a lot of times that misalignment happens is it’s the pressure that’s put on organizations to deliver results. Marketing and sales really need to rely on each other to help the organization achieve that.
00:03:41 – And when the pressure is on, and an organization is not hitting its growth goals or they’re behind on revenue for the month, the quarter, the year, you name it, that pressure starts to come from the top down, right? From the board of directors, the private equity firm, the CEO, and all the leaders in the organization. As that pressure comes down on sales, inevitably, that pressure then comes over to marketing. I think a lot of times, that’s where there might be head-butting because both teams are stressed out, right? They want the best for the organization, and they’re spinning their wheels. There are some red flags that you should look at in your organization to know if there might be a marketing and sales misalignment where you need to get together, hash through it, and really dial in that lever. One of the first things is if the marketing leads are of poor quality, or that’s the feedback you’re getting from the sales team. Because I think it happens all the time.
00:04:43 – Marketing gets focused on their goal of bringing in more marketing-qualified leads that need to turn into sales-qualified leads. If they’re saying, “Hey, we’re meeting our lead numbers, we’re bringing in the volume of leads that we need,” but you have sales standing there and saying, “Okay, but these leads aren’t turning into anything,” it’s really easy to point fingers at each other and say, “Well, lead quality is poor.” “No, sales execution and follow-up is poor,” right? That’s where the misalignment happens. So if you’re hearing the feedback that marketing leads are of poor quality, that’s a sign you need to take a step back and evaluate what may be the issue underlying and where the truth lies.
00:05:30 – And it makes it tough if marketing is being graded on how many leads it pulls in, right? Because then you end up chasing down leads that aren’t necessarily the best ones, but you’re graded on that KPI, so maybe you need to revisit that too. Sometimes the sales team doesn’t feel marketing understands what they need to do their job.
00:05:51 – So that’s another thing that you can connect with sales about and try to hash out so you can deliver what they need to close the deals.
00:05:59 – I’ve heard this one in organizations that I’ve worked at and with clients before, where the sales team, you’ve got the individual sales reps, they’re going out there, and they’re talking day-to-day with prospects and clients. The marketing team is sitting back at their desks creating all this content, and the sales team sometimes will be like, “You know what? I don’t think that they understand what we need.” Meanwhile, the marketing team is saying, “We hear you. We’re creating this content. We can’t just create random content every time you guys have an idea,” right? Again, this creates that misalignment when both teams want to see the company be successful and want to see these prospects move forward and become new business for the organization or expand their footprint if it’s an existing client. But sales is not feeling heard. So that’s another red flag.
00:06:54 – If you hear that, you’ve got to take a step back and dig into it and figure out why. Do they feel like we don’t understand the needs of what sales actually needs? And making sure not that your marketing is driven by the sales team saying, “We want this, we want this.” I think that’s a very dangerous spot to get yourself in as a marketing team because they are not marketing experts, they are sales experts. We are the marketing experts, right? And so we’ve got to be able to explain, “Here’s what we’re doing and here’s why.” But we also need to have our ear to the ground listening and hearing the same things that they’re hearing out in the market. Another issue or red flag that, if it comes up, you need to dial in this lever, is if leadership wants marketing to take the place of traditional sales and business development. So this is one to really think hard about because I think we’ve talked about it in a lot of the other shows that we’ve done.
00:07:56 – Prospects are making up to 80% of their purchase decision before they’re willing to talk to a sales rep. So I think when the feedback comes in that “Hey, marketing needs to drive more sales for us,” really what they’re looking for is we want to see more inbound leads. We don’t have the capacity maybe, or it doesn’t make sense as an organization from a sales perspective for people to go knocking cold on doors knowing that 80% of that purchase decision is being made before someone will talk to the sales team. So it’s really about taking a step back and evaluating, “Is our digital footprint our best sales tool out there to help individuals get to that point where they’re ready to talk to a sales rep?” And if it’s not, then marketing does need to reevaluate the strategy. How do you get in front of prospects and drive more interest to ultimately lead to more inbound leads than you are today?
00:08:57 – And another thing is, a lot of times, the company or the sales, right?
00:09:01 – Everybody really needs higher converting leads. So how do you attack that? It’s similar to what you were just talking about, right? It’s like you have to go back to the strategy and what tactics you are using to try and make sure that you’re getting somebody that’s done their 80% of the research already.
00:09:20 – Right. And that goes back to, like, are you giving them high-quality leads that actually have buying intent or not? You need to look at that and really dig into that. You’re right, Greg, everybody wants higher converting leads for sales. And in a perfect world, sales reps want to receive individuals that have actual buying intent, have the budget, and are actually going to make a decision to move forward. Right. And I think one of our last episodes, you, I don’t know if you remember this, Greg, you threw out a statistic that you had read about the percentage of prospects and opportunities in a B2B sales cycle that actually never go anywhere because they never make a decision.
00:10:02 – That’s a problem for salespeople because they’re spending a lot of time chasing after these leads, trying to convert them. And that’s a really high rate of individuals that they’re talking to that are never going to close, right? So from a marketing perspective, if that’s happening, take a step back. It’s a red flag. You need to look at it and figure out why that is happening. Do we need to talk about our leads and qualify them differently to consider them an actual lead that goes to sales, or is there something else? Because at the end of the day, if you’re a marketing team handing a lot of leads over to the sales team, but they’re not able to close any of them or many of them, then as marketing, you’re failing. You’re not doing the job that you need to do. And yes, it takes two; the lead quality has to be good, and the sales team also has to have the ability to be skilled at their own jobs. Right. But the excuse can’t be, “Well, we know we’re giving good leads over; these people downloaded our white paper,” right? Like, how can they not convert? And then expect that salesperson to be able to just convince somebody that they’re in the market now. Right. So it’s really important to look at not just lead volume but the quality of those leads and what criteria you’re looking at to hand over to them. Because all of these things collectively combined, like many companies will say, “We just need more at-bats for our sales team.” And I think from a lead perspective, that’s how us as marketers get wrapped up in how do we build up the lead volume. And this is ultimately sometimes where the sales and marketing misalignment happens and where the head-butting starts because it’s not actually getting us to the end goal. And if that’s the case, you need to dial that lever in. So let’s talk about what are some of the things you may need to work on if you are finding that maybe there is not alignment between marketing and sales?
00:12:09 – Yeah, I think, like we touched on, you need to go back and define the lead qualification criteria with sales along for the ride and make sure that you have the right definition of what the marketing qualified lead is and what goes, what gets passed on to sales.
00:12:23 – Yeah. And I think it’s really important as you are defining lead qualification criteria that you have sales leadership buy-in on it. Because if they’re not involved in that decision, in that process, then they have every right to push back when you get leads to say these are not good if they’re not moving the needle. If they’re involved and they say, “Yes, I agree. These are the criteria that we should look at,” you can have a much more constructive conversation if the needle is not moving in the direction that you need it to with that sales leader. Then, after you’ve already agreed, like, here’s the lead qualification criteria, take a step back and say, “Hey, look, together, we agreed that this is the qualification criteria, but for the past six months, we’ve been using that, and here’s the volume of leads we’ve had. Here’s how it’s looking in the pipeline. Here’s what actually is moving forward. We’re not hitting our numbers. We maybe need to take a step back and re-evaluate what that criteria is and figure out what we’re going to fine-tune on this so that you can continue to try to get closer to where you need to be from that first lead scoring.
00:13:34 – You may need to work on that. There are a lot of companies out there that have marketing automation with lead scoring built-in, right? And you go and you build out that lead score, and it’s like you get a point for clicking on an email and a couple of points for reading an article, and maybe an automatic qualification if you submit a demo request or contact us form. All of these things, some things may be an automatic qualification, while other things are a point here, a point there. Let’s say you have a prospect that’s really engaged, meaning they love your content, they’re constantly clicking on it and downloading it and reading it, but there’s no buying intent. And so I think sometimes lead scores can be a little misleading because if someone builds up that lead score to the threshold doing a bunch of little things, it doesn’t necessarily indicate buying intent. You’ve got to evaluate that and figure out how to build that lead score in a way that ensures that at least the majority of leads that are coming through have some level of buying intent and not just a bunch of activities that may mean, “Hey, they like your content,” but don’t necessarily equate to, “Hey, I’m in market to buy right now.” And at the end of the day, it’s about maybe doing an alignment discovery and a plan to determine how sales and marketing are going to work together and clearly defining, “Here’s our role in marketing, here’s your role in sales.”
00:15:04 – Here’s how we hand things off to each other, like just mapping it all out so it’s clear for everybody. So, okay, sales presentations, are those created by sales reps, or are they using the marketing presentations that have been built? What are the feedback mechanisms for sales teams to be able to provide feedback to the marketing team that’s helpful without it being overwhelming and creating a whole random acts of marketing approach where sales feels like each individual sales rep thinks, “I need this case study and this presentation,” and is coming to marketing asking for it? Marketing just becomes order takers for them instead of being strategic and making sure the things that you’re doing are not just for one individual but collectively helping move the needle for the whole team.
00:15:55 – I think that’s related to something we’ve talked about in the past too, which is making sure that those materials are also all speaking the same language, right? Like, sales presentations are saying similar things as the marketing message because otherwise, the prospects you’ll lose them, they’ll get confused and be like, “Hold on a second.”
00:16:15 – I read all these emails and all these white papers, and now I’m talking to this salesperson, and they’re telling me something different. You have to make sure that’s all connected too, which would be part of that alignment discovery plan.
00:16:27 – And it depends on the organization, but in some companies, I’ve seen where the sales team is notorious for going and creating their own sales tools and content. Meanwhile, marketing is creating all these things and trying to roll them out, and they’re scratching their heads saying, “Okay, we spent a ton of time and thought developing our sales presentation decks, and yet the sales reps go and create their own slides.” And you see the slides, and as a marketer, we cringe because they’re ugly, they’re off-message. That sales rep is doing it with good intention. They think, “Oh, I need this.” Or maybe they don’t understand how to use and speak to the presentation that was created by marketing. There needs to be some governance over that kind of stuff happening to make sure that the sales reps aren’t going rogue but that they’re getting what they need to be successful. And whether that’s more training and support on the marketing tools that exist.
00:17:32 – So they know because sometimes they think it doesn’t exist, and it does, right? And so instead of asking, “Do you have this?” or saying, “Here’s what I think is missing from this,” giving the marketing team an opportunity to say, “Actually, we have that. Let me walk you through it and talk about it.” They go and create their own stuff, right? Like, they’re not doing it because they’re like, “The marketing stuff is garbage.” Or it could be happening because they know all this stuff exists, but they feel like marketing doesn’t understand their needs, so they’re going to go create their own stuff because these are the conversations they’re having with clients. And all of that feeds into that whole marketing and sales misalignment. And you’ve got to get in front of that and be able to talk openly and figure out those processes, which leads to the 11th and final lever of the 12, which is sales processes. And I think at first glance, people would be like, “Why do you have sales processes as a lever that marketing needs to dial in?” Because sales processes are, quite frankly, owned by the sales team.
00:18:34 – That is true. But if marketing doesn’t know what those sales processes are and isn’t supporting them with the content that the sales team needs, that’s a problem, and that’s an area that needs to be dialed in. The way I look at it is when a lead gets passed from marketing to sales, it’s not as if marketing’s job is done. I mean, it would be great, right, if we could just say, “Here’s your leads, good luck. You go do you,” right? It doesn’t work that way. They still need the support from marketing because if there are issues like leads are not closing, or leads tend to stall out at a certain stage in the sales cycle, or, God forbid, leads are not getting followed up on, for example. A lot of organizations, there’s virtual selling now, it’s not as much face-to-face anymore, and a large portion of lead development has maybe moved online. Well, these sales reps need support with. And from a sales process standpoint, they may also have some type of sales strategy program that they’re following.
00:19:43 – So for example, Sandler or Miller Heiman. A lot of organizations in the HR tech space use those types of processes to say, “Here are the steps in the sales process.” And so from a marketing standpoint, we want to make sure that we’re providing them content that supports the processes that they have, that’s digging in with them when things are happening like, “Hey, we get through the first two meetings, they see a demo, they get really good feedback on the demo, and then our leads tend to stall out.” Okay, maybe there’s a messaging issue, maybe there’s not enough case studies, maybe there’s something that needs to be looked at from a marketing standpoint.
00:20:33 – So the things you should start looking at and start to work on, look through some of your win-loss surveys and some of the research that you have on how the buyers have gone through the process and see where they’re dropping off or where there’s a misalignment, and then try to figure out what those pieces are that need to be developed to help the sales keep moving through.
00:20:53 – Yes, I think in a lot of organizations, doing win-loss surveys and research often falls on the marketing team, and that’s where we come in. And when we help, we go back to prospects that didn’t move forward or that did move forward and get that information to be able to compile it for the sales team and figure out, are there trends? The reason we keep losing is because of XYZ. Like maybe a competitor has better message positioning, or maybe there are too many steps in the sales process, and people just get overwhelmed and step away. Maybe they didn’t really have a need to begin with, but they went through the process and then they fell off. Like all of those things are really important to know for the sales team and for the marketing team because you’re going to find information from those win-loss surveys and research that will help you shape things like message positioning and be able to give feedback to the product team to say, “Hey, our competitors have this, we don’t. This is why we keep losing,” so that they can evaluate.
00:22:02 – Do they need to develop that functionality within the technology, or do we need to, as marketers, create more content and case studies and videos and things for the bottom of the funnel that will help sales reps have more impactful conversations and more lasting content to leave people with as they’re making that decision.
00:22:27 – Anything to go along with that content and the buyer’s journey, like you have to, along with looking at the win-loss surveys in that way, you need to look at the buyer’s journey because that keeps changing, right? I mean, people are doing things differently now. Six months from now, they’re going to be doing things differently than they’re doing them now. You need to constantly go back and make sure that really is the buyer’s journey. Like maybe you have the road map.
00:22:51 – Right?
00:22:51 – Like the process, it used to be like meet in person, see a demo. Before that, there was a discovery call, then there was probably a proposal call. There were a lot of steps involved, and we all know buyers aren’t quite as patient as they used to be in finding the information that they need, and they’re less excited about having multiple conversations with a sales rep.
00:23:14 – They’re trying to do a lot of things themselves to gather the information. And so those buyer journey maps are important because it’s important to have your ear to the ground as a marketer to understand how prospects are making their purchase decisions and what steps they’re taking internally. So that from a marketing standpoint, again, the content can be created for the sales reps to use as they’re having those conversations and as they’re doing outreach with those prospects to be able to ensure the buyers are getting what they need and want from our team. And that plays into looking at your sales collateral and your sales playbooks in your presentations and a pitch book with talking points and all of those pieces that the sales team can leverage. It may be looking at your proposal response library. A lot of times, it depends on the organization and the size of the organization. But there are certainly companies out there who ask marketing to own that content library for the proposal to help the sales team manage that and be able to build out proposals so that they have responses that are on message, that are consistent across proposals, that are detailed, all of those things.
00:24:32 – It may be looking at FAQs that are actually created for the sales team. So again, they have responses ready that if someone says, “Okay, you have AI in your HR tech that we’re considering. What I need to understand is how do we train it when we bring it on board? What are the things we need to watch out for?” That kind of stuff, so there’s a ready response for the sales rep to be able to pull from. Because when they come on new, they’re not going to know everything, right? And even when they’ve been there for a while, as the product evolves, they have to continually learn as well and be able to have really good responses that are well thought out for prospects.
00:25:17 – Yeah. So as you can see, these last two levers, marketing and sales alignment and sales processes, are just as important as the other ten levers that we talked about. It’s important to look at each of the 12 levers and then dial each one in to optimize for the best success for marketing and sales.
00:25:35 – Indeed, and we hope you found value in this six-part series on the 12 levers that impact marketing results. If you haven’t listened to the other five episodes, we encourage you to go back. They are, again, episodes 57, 58, 61, 62, and 65. And this is episode 66. And if you need help digging in on any of the levers, just know our team at GrowthMode Marketing is here for you.
00:26:04 – Thanks for joining us on The Demand Gen Fix, a podcast for HR tech marketers brought to you by GrowthMode Marketing. I sure hope you enjoyed it. Don’t forget to subscribe for more perspectives on demand generation and B2B marketing strategies. Plus, give us a like. Tell your friends. We’ll see you next time.
