Name: Video 1 - Filling The Gaps in The Sales & Marketing Connection: Taking the Alignment to the Next Level
Uploaded: 2017-12-18T08:03:03.345Z
Duration: 5 min 24 s

Fundação Instituto de Administração

Sales & Marketing Alignment

4 ratings

Course 4 of 5 in the Specialization Strategic Sales Management

Welcome to Course 4 – Sales & Marketing Alignment. This course focus on what is considered by most academics and practitioners as the biggest challenge that sales professionals have to face. As we discussed in Course 1 – Effective Sales, strategy, and sales must be integrated to support a high potential for value creation through the sales functions. We also mentioned that strategy and sales integration can be supported by marketing functions. The discussions then went through sales strategy supported by intelligence analysis (Course 2), sales models and frameworks to support sales planning (Course 3). By the consequence, at this point of this specialization, you are in a good position to go further in the sales planning and management functions. And this is the moment to tackle one of the biggest challenges that most sales professionals must address with diligence – Sales & Marketing Alignment. The primary learning outcome of this course is to prepare you to apply concepts to support this alignment, with prescriptions and recommendations that contribute to improving the alignment. The improvement in the knowledge, competencies, and skills regarding sales & marketing alignment will contribute to increasing the potential for value creation from a strategic sales planning approach.

From the lesson

Module 3 - A Checklist On Sales & Marketing Integration

Welcome to A Checklist on Sales & Marketing Alignment Module. This module's learning outcomes are - Deepen the knowledge of sales & marketing alignment and business success, identifying the level of alignment and what are the gaps to be filled, and analyzing what to do to and implementing the actions to align sales and marketing. By the end of the module, you'll be able to do a critical analysis of the major issues between sales and marketing, identify the roots of the problems, and design alternative approaches to implement to mitigate the consequences and strengthen sales and marketing alignment.

Video 1 - Filling The Gaps in The Sales & Marketing Connection: Taking the Alignment to the Next Level5:24

Video 2 - Filling The Gaps in The Sales & Marketing Connection: Communication7:29

Video 3 - Filling The Gaps in The Sales & Marketing Connection: Structure & Processes8:23

Meet the Instructors

Samantha Mazzero
MSc, MBA, BS Math
FIA Profuturo – Futures Studies Program
Nelson Yoshida
Ph.D., MBA, B.Eng.
FIA Profuturo – Futures Studies Program
Cesar Rodrigues
Specialist Professor

Hello there. I hope you're doing well today.

As promised in our previous meeting,

we will now look into some propositions on how

to solve sales and marketing misalignments.

The solutions proposed are the ones suggested by Kotler, Rackham,

and Krishnaswamy in the Harvard Business Review article,

ending the war between sales and marketing.

You may be asking why we give such importance to this article,

and there are reasons of course.

First, the authors, Kotler is considered by many as the pope of marketing,

and his book 'Marketing Administration' is a classic in all business schools.

Neil Rackham is another author you will recall.

He created the selling technique, 'Spin Selling',

and wrote the book about it,

and we learned about it during our course number three.

And Suj Krishnaswamy is a top consultant on the strategic sales and marketing connection.

Now, this is the most thorough work on the topic ever written,

and the authors have analyzed in depth the relationship

between sales and marketing in a wide range of industries: heavy equipment,

materials, financial services, medical systems,

energy, insurance, high tech electronics, and airlines.

An interesting approach in this article is that

the author argued that in some situations,

you shouldn't try to improve the way marketing and sales interact,

even if it's not optimal.

And you'll say, "Wait a minute.

We have agreed in previous meetings that we shouldn't do that.

We shouldn't leave marketing and sales misaligned."

And I think their proposal attests to the originality of this article.

So let's go back a little and remember that we have assessed the level of

alignment by applying the article's questionnaire two.

According to the points,

we had four levels of alignment;

the lowest one, undefined;

a little better level of alignment, define;

still a little better,

aligned; and the best possible, integrated.

So when mustn't we try to improve the alignment?

A, if the level of alignment is undefined,

the lowest one, and the companies are small,

has good informal relationships,

and marketing is still just a sales support function, they'll make changes.

B, if the level of alignment is

defined and the company's products and services are simple,

and traditional marketing and sales work well in this market,

plus there is no clear reason to change.

Don't make changes.

C, if the level of alignment is aligned,

and the company lacks a culture of shared responsibility,

and sales and marketing report to separate bosses and say the sales cycle,

meaning proposal, negotiation, and the order.

If this cycle's short, there is no reason to make changes.

Finally, if the level of alignment is the highest one,

integrated, don't make changes, of course.

As I said, this is the highest level of alignment and as they say,

"If they ain't broken, don't try to fix it."

In all other situations,

the organization will benefit from greater alignment.

What are the things we can do to improve this alignment?

The authors provide different prescriptions,

and for the sake of simplicity,

we have split them into two groups: basic alignment and advanced alignment.

In basic alignment, we are aiming to take the level from undefined to define to aligned.

They most include measures for improving communication.

In advanced alignment, our intent is to move up from a line to an integrated level.

The measures here involve changes in processes and structural organization.

We will explore together what those recommendations are during our next encounters.

Hope you had a good time today.

I'll see you next time.