7 Truths About Sales and Marketing (That CEOs Need to Know - Part 1)

Posted by Dan McDade

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on May 10, 2016 12:28:37 PM

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7 Truths on Sales and Marketing Part 1Understanding the CEO’s role in eliminating wasted marketing spend and increasing sales results—the first of a 9 part blog series.

One of my favorite authors and speakers, Mike Weinberg, says the following about the CEO’s role in companies: “As goes the leader, so goes the organization. The level of the team rarely, if ever, exceeds the level of its leader.”

In his book New Sales. Simplified. Mike writes: “Where I’m from it’s the chief executive’s job to determine and articulate the company’s strategy. It’s essential to be able to inform the sales team about: our reason for existence, the direction of the company and why it’s the correct course, what we sell and why we sell it, which markets to pursue, the competitive landscape and the pricing model.”

Whether you are the CEO, or aspire to be, there’s some chance that in your opinion marketing and/or the sales organizations in your company are far from operating efficiently or effectively. That’s because in most companies:

  • Marketing measures itself on lead quantity rather than lead quality.
  • Sales measures itself on revenue generated (and sometimes margin).
  • Neither marketing nor sales are measured on the effectiveness of marketing investments as they relate to driving revenue.

So today, with available technologies, marketing is now able to drive more, poor quality, leads to sales faster than ever before. And for the most part sales ignores them because they’ve been conditioned to expect poor quality leads from marketing.

As a CEO there are 7 truths you need to know to help you eliminate wasted marketing spend and increase revenue. They are:

  1. Define a lead and gain agreement. If your teams aren’t in sync in their understanding of what you sell and who you sell it to, you’re wasting time, blowing money and giving competitors advantage.
  2. Drive revenue from all sources: Inbound, nurture and proactive outbound. Only with an allbound approach will you be able to efficiently meet your revenue goals.
  3. Make marketing accountable for sourcing revenue. Be proactive about putting skin in the game, and give credit accordingly.
  4. Document the cost per leadand the cost per sales accepted lead, -sales qualified lead, -closed deal. Understand the price you’re paying, then optimize it.
  5. Keep leads from being ignored. Borrow an idea from our forefathers, and put a Judicial Branch in place, to make sure you’re getting return on marketing investment.
  6. Nurture leads until they’re ready to turn over to sales. You’ll triple your marketing return.
  7. Develop a guide for sales “What is a Lead and How to Follow-up on One.” Make training about the guide mandatory.

I’ll cover each of these 7 Truths in subsequent blogs. Stay tuned. Your comments are welcome.

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Topics: B2B Marketing, Marketing & Sales Alignment, B2B Sales


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