Why It's Time to Rethink Personalization

The value of personalization in marketing has been largely unquestioned for nearly two decades. Today, most marketers view personalization as essential for success, and many companies have made personalization a top priority. But the marketing environment is changing, and that means it's time for marketers to rethink their personalization strategy.

In a report published last November, the research firm Gartner predicted that by 2021, one-third of marketers will reduce spending on personalization, and by 2025, 80% of marketers who have invested in personalization will abandon their efforts due to lack of ROI, the perils of data management, or both. These predictions were both surprising and controversial because they run counter to most of the current conventional wisdom about personalization.

While I doubt that eight out of ten marketers will completely abandon personalization over the next five years, it is clear that marketers are already facing a personalization conundrum. On one hand, numerous studies conducted over the past several years have reported that consumers and business buyers want - and are willing to provide personal information in order to receive - personalized offers, messages, and experiences.

But a growing number of studies also show that consumers and business buyers don't always welcome personalized marketing and will react strongly when they perceive that personalization goes too far. In one recent study, for example, 38% of survey respondents said they would stop doing business with a company that sent them "creepy" personalized messages.

Most marketing pundits and many marketing leaders argue that the key to increasing the effectiveness of personalized marketing is more personalization. They contend that marketers should collect and use more data about customers and prospects, make personalization more specific, and use it more frequently, in more channels, and for more types of interactions. The popularity of this view explains why hyper-personalization and personalization at scale have recently attained buzzword status.

The "more personalization" argument is based on the idea that increased personalization will produce more relevant messages and experiences, and that the increased relevance will make those messages and experiences more compelling. The fundamental flaw of this approach is that it fails to account for a significant shift in public attitudes toward personalization that's occurred over the past few years.

The Shadow of Cambridge Analytica

Since the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal became public knowledge a few years ago, we have been bombarded with media coverage about how companies collect and use our personal information. Facebook's data privacy policies and practices have been widely, strongly, and repeatedly criticized, but other large tech firms such as Alphabet/Google have also been the subject of multiple media stories and Congressional hearings.

All of this has made the public more acutely aware of how much personal data companies are collecting and how they are using that data to target and personalize advertisements and other marketing communications.

Note:  The data practices of large technology companies have also been addressed by several highly-respected scholars. If you'd like to see an example of these discussions, get a copy of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff. Dr. Zuboff is the Charles Edward Wilson Professor emerita at the Harvard Business School. Her book is thorough and sobering - if somewhat strident - but at over 700 pages, it is not a quick or easy read.

The heightened public awareness is impacting personalization in two ways. First, as members of the public have become more knowledgeable about how companies are using personalization in marketing, they have become desensitized to its effects. They no longer see personalized messages or content as extraordinary. So, many of the more widely-used personalization tactics and methods make less of an impact today than they did in the past. As the old saying goes, "Familiarity breeds contempt."

More importantly, as the public has learned more about how companies are collecting and using personal information, they have also become more disturbed about those practices. Today, when someone receives a personalized message, he or she is likely to think first about what enabled the personalization. What does this company know about me? How did the company obtain that information?

The conundrum facing marketers is clear. Most consumers and business buyers say they want and value personalized offers, messages, and experiences. At the same time, however, both consumers and business buyers are becoming more concerned about privacy, and they are increasingly distrustful about how companies are obtaining and using their personal information.

Under these circumstances, the "more personalization" strategy may do more harm that good. So, what's the alternative? I'll discuss that in my next post.

Image courtesy of Phil Wolff via Flickr CC.

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The State of Trust in Business

The global communication firm Edelman released the 2020 edition of its "Trust Barometer" survey during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland last month. The new survey found that despite low levels of unemployment in most of the markets covered, many people aren't optimistic about their prospects for the future. About two-thirds of the survey respondents said they do not have confidence that their current leaders can successfully address their country's challenges.

Edelman has been conducting an annual survey on the state of trust around the world for the past 20 years. The Trust Barometer survey focuses on trust in four societal institutions - government, business, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and the media. The latest survey polled over 34,000 people in 28 countries.

The 2020 Trust Barometer survey found that the overall level of trust has changed little over the past year. Edelman's global Trust Index (the average percent trust in NGOs, business, government, and media) was 54 in the 2020 survey, compared to 53 in the 2019 survey. On average, trust in all four societal institutions increased slightly, but both government and media are still distrusted in most of the countries included in the survey.

Trust has become a major issue for business and marketing leaders over the past few years because of growing concerns about the collection, protection, and use of personal information by business organizations. The Trust Barometer survey doesn't directly address privacy-related trust issues, but it does provide insights about the general level of trust in business. These insights are important for marketers because they describe the "trust environment" in which marketing activities are conducted.

The findings of the 2020 Trust Barometer indicate that public perceptions of business are somewhat ambivalent. Overall, survey respondents trust business organizations as much as they trust NGOs, and significantly more than they trust government and media. Based on the Trust Index scores, business organizations are "trusted" in 12 of the countries included in the survey and "distrusted" in 7 countries. In the 9 remaining countries (including the U.S.), business earned a "neutral" Trust Index score.

In the United States, trust in business has remained relatively stable over the past 5 years, as the following chart shows:

The ambivalent views of business can be seen in several specific findings from the 2020 Trust Barometer. On the positive side, business was the only societal institution that survey respondents rated as competent ("good at what it does"). The net competence score for business was 14, compared to -4 for NGOs, -17 for media, and -40 for government. Respondents gave business fairly high marks for generating value for owners, being an engine of innovation, and driving economic prosperity.

On the negative side, 56% of the global respondents agreed with this statement:  "Capitalism as it exists today does more harm than good in the world." (Note:  "Only" 47% of U.S. respondents agreed with the statement.) In addition, 54% of the global respondents said that business "serves the interests of only the few," while only 29% said that business "serves the interests of everyone equally and fairly."

So how should business and marketing leaders interpret these findings, and what can they do to bolster trust in their company? When interpreting the results of the Trust Barometer survey, it's important to remember that Edelman focuses on business generically - as one of four societal institutions. The survey did not ask respondents about their trust in individual companies. It's not surprising that the respondents had ambivalent feelings about "business" as an institution.

The good news is that business and marketing leaders can identify what they need to do to increase trust in their company. In a December 2019 survey of 2,200 U.S. adults, Morning Consult asked participants what factors are very important when considering whether to trust a company. The following table show the 11 factors that were  identified by more than 50% of the survey respondents:

These results are noteworthy because they show that when U.S. consumers are deciding whether to trust a specific company, they place greatest importance on factors relating to reliability. Protect my personal data - make products that work as advertised - deliver on what you promise - treat your customers well.

Morning Consult also presented survey participants several factors that embodied aspects of social and environmental responsibility, but except for "treat employees well," none of these factors were rated as very important by a majority of survey respondents.

I am not suggesting the business and marketing leaders can safely ignore environmental and social issues. Numerous recent surveys have found that younger consumers and business buyers are placing increased emphasis on environmental and social factors when deciding what companies to buy from.

There is also a growing focus in the investment community on so-called "ESG" (environmental-social-governance) investing. For example, 2019 research by Morningstar found that in 2018, there were 351 "sustainable" funds available to U.S. investors, up from 235 such funds in 2017. This research also found that 2018 was the third consecutive year these funds had received record cash inflows.

So it seems clear that environmental and social issues are becoming more important when it comes to earning trust, but right now, the most important factors still relate to reliability.

Top image courtesy of chuks mbata via Flickr CC.

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Unconventional Views on B2B Growth

Last fall, The B2B Institute (a think tank funded by LinkedIn) published a research report that every B2B marketer should read. The 5 Principles Of Growth In B2B Marketing describes the findings of research conducted by Les Binet and Peter Field, two highly-regarded, UK-based experts on advertising effectiveness.

This report is based on an analysis of data contained in the IPA (Institute of Practitioners in Advertising) Databank. The IPA is a trade organization representing the UK advertising industry, and the Databank includes extensive data submitted for the IPA effectiveness awards competition. This database includes information about almost 1,500 advertising and marketing campaigns.

In this report, Binet and Field discuss five principles of B2B growth and effective advertising. Most of these principles embody views that run counter to much of the current conventional wisdom about how B2B marketers can effectively drive growth. While Binet and Field accurately describe their findings as tentative - more about this later - this research is provocative and should be given serious consideration.

Below is a brief summary of the five principles discussed in the report.

Principle 1 - Invest in Share of Voice

Share of voice is typically defined as a brand's share of all category advertising expenditures. A long-standing principle in B2C marketing is that brands tend to grow when their share of voice exceeds their market share, if all other things are equal. Brands whose share of voice is less than their market share tend to shrink. Binet and Field found that this principle is equally true for B2B companies.

Principle 2 - Balance Brand and Activation

Binet and Field argue that B2B companies should balance their spending on brand building activities and sales activation activities.  They define sales activation as any marketing activity that is designed to produce an immediate response from a potential customer.

Sales activation activities usually produce results relatively quickly, and their short-term ROI can be high. But the effects of sales activation activities don't last very long, so they don't foster long-term growth. Brand building activities, on the other hand, excel at driving long-term growth because their  effects last longer.

Binet and Field found that the effectiveness of B2B marketing is maximized when a company allocates about 46% of its marketing budget to brand building and about 54% to short-term sales activation.

Principle 3 - Expand Your Customer Base

The growing importance of customer experience, and the shift to subscription-based business models have led some B2B marketers to place greater emphasis on programs intended to improve customer retention and loyalty. However, the research by Binet and Field found that customer acquisition strategies are much more effective at driving growth than customer retention/loyalty strategies. They also found that reach strategies - strategies that seek to engage both customers and non-customers - tend to be most effective of all.

Principle 4 - Maximize Mental Availability

According to psychologists, human beings use a variety of mental shortcuts called heuristics when they make decisions. One of the most important mental shortcuts is the availability heuristic, which says that when people are facing a choice between several options, they will tend to prefer the option that comes to mind most easily.

Marketers have long known that the availability heuristic plays an important role in B2C marketing. The research by Binet and Field found that mental availability is also critical in B2B marketing, and that marketing activities that increase share of mind are highly effective at driving growth.

Principle 5 - Harness the Power of Emotion

Binet and Field found that emotions are almost as important in B2B buying as they are in B2C buying. Specifically, they found that B2B advertising messaging that appeals mostly to emotions is far better at creating brand preference than more rational content. Conversely, rational arguments perform better than emotional appeals when the main objective is short-term sales activation. The researchers also argued that emotional brand building programs can improve the effectiveness of rational sales activation programs.

Caveats

As I noted earlier, Binet and Field acknowledged in the research report that their conclusions should be viewed as tentative for several reasons:

• The research was based on an analysis of less than 50 cases in the IPA Databank, so the sample size is very small.
• The campaigns analyzed may not be representative of B2B marketing in general.
• The campaigns analyzed tended to have relatively large budgets.
• Most of the campaigns analyzed were run in the UK.

Despite these caveats, the research by Binet and Field raises several important issues, and I hope to see more research on these issues. Much of the conversation in B2B marketing focuses on how many things have changed. The research by Binet and Field reminds us that some things may not have changed as much as we usually think.

Image Source:  The B2B Institute (LinkedIn)

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Remembering the "Disruptive" Work of Clayton Christensen

The business world lost one of its leading thinkers last month when Clayton Christensen died on January 23, 2020. He was 67.

Professor Christensen joined the faculty of the Harvard Business School in 1992, after working as a consultant at Boston Consulting Group and co-founding an advanced materials company. He achieved management guru status after the success of his 1997 book, The Innovator's Dilemma. The Economist magazine called The Innovator's Dilemma one of the six most important business books ever written.

In his groundbreaking book, Professor Christensen introduced the concept of "disruptive innovation." He argued that many of the practices that help the best companies succeed can also lead to their ultimate failure. Professor Christensen's ideas have become so popular that "disruption" is now firmly entrenched in the lexicon of business.

In 2003, Professor Christensen and Michael Raynor co-authored The Innovator's Solution, which further developed the concept of disruptive innovation and also discussed what we now call the "jobs-to-be-done" framework of buyer decision making. Professor Christensen acknowledged that he did not originate the jobs-to-be-done framework, but his adoption of the idea has helped make it part of mainstream business and marketing thinking.

Like thousands of others, I have been greatly influenced by the thinking and work of Clayton Christensen. When I learned of his death, I looked back at the posts I've published here and discovered that I first referred to his work almost eight years ago. To commemorate his life and work, I've reproduced that first post below.

Fair winds and following seas, Professor Christensen.

"For Great Marketing Content, Focus on the Jobs Prospects Need to Get Done"
April 14, 2012

The first step to creating compelling marketing content is to understand what your prospects are trying to accomplish when they purchase products or services like those you provide. Most buyers, particularly business buyers, don't purchase a product or service because they want that product or service itself. Instead, when they become aware of a job that they need to get done, they look for a product or service that they can "hire" to perform the job. Theodore Levitt, the legendary marketing professor at the Harvard Business School, captured this concept in a memorable way when he said, "People don't want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole."

In The Innovator's Solution, Clatyon Christensen and Michael Raynor provide an interesting example of hiring a product to get a job done. A fast-food restaurant chain wanted to increase sales of milkshakes, and it commissioned market research to better understand how to accomplish this goal. The most surprising finding of the research was that almost half of all milkshakes were purchased in the early morning. The milkshakes were usually the only item purchased, and they were rarely consumed on the premises.

The researchers found that most of the morning milkshake customers were people on their way to work. They faced a long commute, and they needed something to make the drive more interesting. In addition, while they weren't necessarily hungry when they bought the shake, they knew if they didn't eat something, they would be hungry by mid-morning. Most of these customers also faced similar constraints. They were in a hurry, they were usually wearing their business clothes, and they only had one free hand.

These customers sometimes "hired" other foods to fill their morning needs, but most of the alternatives had significant disadvantages. Bagels got crumbs on their clothes, bananas were eaten too quickly to last for the whole commute, and breakfast sandwiches made their hands and the steering wheel greasy. It wasn't so much that these customers "liked" milkshakes better than bagels or bananas or breakfast sandwiches, but milkshakes were better than these alternatives at performing the job the customers needed to get done.

It's not hard to find examples of this idea in the business world:

• No business owner really wants accounting software, but many buy such software because they realize they need to generate invoices faster, know how much they owe to vendors, and understand how well their company is performing financially. Accounting software enables them to perform these jobs more efficiently than a manaul bookkeeping system.
• No business owner really wants property insurance, but most will purchase insurance because they know they need to protect themselves financially in case of a fire. Insurance is the best-available tool for performing this job.
• No business owner really wants a company brochure, or a direct mail campaign, or for that matter, a website, but many will invest in those things because they see them as effective tools for performing the job of increasing sales.

As businesspeople and marketers, it's easy for us to forget that most potential buyers aren't really interested in our products or services per se. What they are (or can become) interested in is what our products or services can help them accomplish. Our products or services are simply the means to an end, and this fact should determine the primary focus of our marketing content. To use Levitt's analogy, our marketing content needs to be more about quarter-inch holes than about quarter-inch drills.

To create such content, you have to know what jobs your prospects are trying to get done, why those jobs are important, what happens if those jobs don't get done, and what issues or problems can prevent prospects from performing those jobs. The answers to these questions will provide the basis for your marketing content.

Image courtesy of Betsy Weber via Flickr CC.

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What "Professional" B2B Buyers Want

For obvious reasons, B2B marketers have always craved insights about their current and potential buyers. Such insights can enable astute marketers to craft more compelling value propositions, run more effective marketing programs, and deliver better customer experiences.

Every year, I review several research studies that focus on the attitudes, preferences, and behaviors of B2B buyers. In most years, these studies address a diverse set of specific topics, as the following examples from 2019 illustrate:

• Service is the new sales (Accenture Interactive)
• The B2B Millennial Buyer Survey Report (Demand Gen Report and The Mx Group)
• Creating Epic Customer Experiences (Marketo)
• The 2019 B2B Buying Disconnect (TrustRadius)

Most of the published B2B buyer research focuses on "non-professional" buyers. By "non-professional," I mean individuals who do not work in their company's procurement/purchasing function. The research has given far less attention to the attributes and behaviors of individuals whose primary job responsibility is purchasing goods and services for their company, even though many B2B companies derive significant revenue from sales involving these "professional" buyers.

Late last year, PROS (a provider of dynamic pricing software) published a report that provides important insights about "professional" business buyers. What B2B Buyers Want was based on a survey of 1,053 "leaders in procurement and purchasing" that was conducted in association with Hanover Research. The objective of this survey was to capture insights about the current expectations of professional business buyers and identify what matters most to them.

Here is an overview of some of the major findings.

Most Professional Buyers Prefer Incumbent Suppliers

The buyers polled in this survey exhibited a strong preference for incumbent suppliers. Sixty percent of the survey respondents said they switch suppliers occasionally or less frequently (24% said rarely and 4% said never). This preference for incumbents isn't difficult to understand. First, switching suppliers requires time and effort. And second, buying from a new supplier can entail significant risk if the products or services involved are mission critical.

The preference for incumbent suppliers is not, however, unconditional. Buyers will remain loyal if they believe the prices they are paying a supplier are fair and reasonable given the current market conditions. In this study, nearly three-quarters of the survey respondents indicated that they are very or extremely confident they are paying fair prices. When the survey participants were asked what had caused them to switch suppliers, 39% said it was because of price increases, and 30% said it was because they found a cheaper supplier.

Professional Buyers Value Personalization

The buyers participating in this study want personalization if it helps them increase the value they obtain from a supplier. Ninety-two percent of the survey respondents said they desire personalized recommendations, and 69% strongly or somewhat agreed that personalized offers and recommendations enabled them to obtain more value from their suppliers.

A majority of the buyers in this research acknowledged that personalization can have real economic value. More than half of the survey respondents said they are willing to pay a higher price to receive personalized product and service recommendations.

Ecommerce Becomes Mainstream

The PROS research also found that professional B2B buyers are increasingly using digital channels for self-service purchasing.

• Only 15% of the survey respondents said they were making the majority of their purchases online two years ago.
• 30% said they are currently making the majority of their purchases online.
• 44% said they expect to make the majority of their purchases online within two years.

This finding does not mean that professional business buyers see no value in person-to-person interactions. In fact, a majority of the survey respondents said they prefer talking with a sales representative in several circumstances. For example:

• When products involve complex configurations - 61%
• When asking about special prices - 61%
• When inquiring about specific purchase terms - 58%
• When learning about new products - 52%

The Takeaway

The findings of the PROS survey provide three important takeaways for B2B marketing and sales professionals:

1. Professional business buyers are risk averse, so they prefer to work with trusted suppliers.
2. They want personalization, so long as it provides pragmatic value.
3. They are shifting more of their purchases to digital self-service channels, but they still want access to a human when facing more complex decisions and when learning about new products or services.

Image Source:  PROS Holdings, Inc.

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Three Critical Steps for Thought Leadership Success

It's now abundantly clear that compelling thought leadership content has become a vital component of effective marketing for most B2B companies. Numerous research studies have demonstrated that business buyers are relying on thought leadership content and that it has a significant impact on purchase decisions.

The 2020 B2B Thought Leadership Impact Study by Edelman Business Marketing and LinkedIn provides more convincing evidence that good thought leadership content has become essential for successful B2B marketing. This research involved a survey of 3,275 global business executives across a wide range of industries and company sizes.

The survey was fielded in September - October of last year, and respondents were drawn from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, France, Germany, India, and Singapore. Nearly 1,200 of the respondents were located in the United States.

The Edelman/LinkedIn study clearly shows the importance and value of compelling thought leadership content. For example:

• Nearly half of the survey respondents (48%) said they spend at least one hour per week consuming thought leadership content, and 17% reported spending four hours or more per week.
• 69% agreed that consuming thought leadership content is one of the best ways to get a sense of the caliber of an organization's thinking.
• 48% said that thought leadership content had led them to award business to a company.

It's also clear, however, that thought leadership can be a double-edged sword. In the Edelman/LinkedIn survey, only 17% of the respondents rated the quality of the thought leadership content they consume as very good or excellent, while 28% rated the quality as mediocre or very poor. One in four of the respondents (25%) said that consuming a company's thought leadership content had directly led them not to award business to the company.

What Makes Thought Leadership Content Effective

Several research studies have identified the attributes that make thought leadership content persuasive. While the exact descriptions used in these studies vary somewhat, the research findings demonstrate that three attributes are critical.

1. It must address a topic and provide information that is relevant and important to the target audience.
2. It must provide information that is novel (not previously available).
3. It must be authoritative (supported by credible evidence).

Laying the Foundation for Thought Leadership Success

Producing thought leadership content that will earn and keep the attention and respect of your target audiences is not an easy task, but there are three preliminary steps you can take to lay a sound foundation for your thought leadership effort.

Step 1:  Set high standards for your thought leadership content. Remember that thought leadership content must address subjects that are relevant and important to your target audience, it must provide novel information or insight, and it must be authoritative. Don't make compromises regarding these standards.

Step 2:  Be realistic about the volume of thought leadership content you can produce. Effective thought leadership content almost always requires original research, and original research takes time. Therefore, you need to set realistic goals for the amount of thought leadership content you will produce during any given period of time.

Step 3:  Before you start, conduct sufficient research to get a clear understanding of the "knowledge landscape" that's relevant for your business, and keep that understanding up to date. You can't identify topics that will be appropriate for thought leadership content until you know what subjects have already been addressed. To develop thought leadership content that is novel, you will usually want to avoid topics that have already been discussed. However, there are three notable exceptions to this general rule.

• First, a broad topic may have been previously discussed, but specific aspects of the topic may not have been thoroughly covered. These particular aspects can be good subjects for thought leadership content if they are relevant and important to your customers and/or prospects.
• Second, if a topic has not been addressed for a significant amount of time, it can be appropriate to take a fresh look at that topic.
• And third, if a topic has already been addressed but the existing treatment is flawed or incomplete, that can be an appropriate subject for thought leadership content.

Obviously, these three steps are not all that's needed for a successful thought leadership program. You will also need to conduct any required original research, produce the thought leadership content resources, and implement activities to distribute and promote those resources. But these three preliminary steps will provide a solid foundation for an effective thought leadership effort.

Illustration courtesy of Abhijit Bhadurl via Flickr CC.

Related Articles

Why Your Marketing Content Should Be "Job Focused"

Effective B2B Marketing Demands Original Research 

B2B Buyers Remain Skeptical About Vendor Content

The Growing Influence of Compelling Thought Leadership

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Moving Beyond Mere Sales-Marketing "Alignment"

In my last post, I discussed some of the findings of a 2019 survey about sales and marketing alignment by LeadMD and Drift. In this survey, over 90% of the respondents described their marketing and sales functions as well aligned or very well aligned. However, 60% of those respondents also reported that their company had not performed well in terms of revenue and pipeline growth.

This research also found a strong correlation between positive perceptions about the quality of sales-marketing alignment and the use of key performance indicators that are shared by marketing and sales. Ironically, the survey found that the mere existence of shared KPIs is sufficient to engender positive feelings about alignment. The survey report states, "It's critical to note that lack of achievement around these KPIs did not negatively influence alignment perceptions - the presence of the shared KPI was enough."

This finding helps explain why many companies have found it difficult to create the kind of sales-marketing relationship that will actually drive improved business outcomes. Many of the widely-touted "best practices" for improving sales-marketing alignment focus on three primary objectives:

1. Creating a shared understanding among marketing and sales team members regarding the key elements of the company's go-to-market strategy, including the definition of the target market, the ideal customer profile, core value propositions, and customer buying processes;
2. Establishing an agreed-upon lead management process ("who does what and when"); and
3. Shared performance measures that collective show how well the company's revenue generation strategy and processes are performing.

These objectives are certainly important, but they aren't sufficient to create the kind of sales-marketing alignment that is needed to produce significant improvements in important business outcomes. In fact, the term "alignment" does not adequately capture the real sense of what is required. A better term for what is needed is operational integration. By operational integration, I mean that marketing and sales work as a single, cohesive team on a day-in, day-out basis, even though they are separate functions on the organizational chart.

From Alignment to Operational Integration

To move from conventional "alignment" to operational integration, sales and marketing leaders need to focus on two additional objectives.

Recognized Interdependence - The operational integration of sales and marketing requires a widespread recognition among both marketing and sales professionals that the two functions are now deeply interdependent. In other words, both marketing and sales professionals must recognize that they need each other, and that an integrated approach to revenue generation is essential for success.

Ongoing, Self-Directed Collaboration - Operational integration also requires marketing and sales professionals to work collaboratively on an ongoing basis, and this collaboration needs to occur naturally and spontaneously, at all levels of both functions, whenever and wherever it's needed. In other words, working collaboratively must become the normal way of getting things done.

How Leaders Nurture Operational Integration

Nurturing operational integration is primarily the responsibility of the chief marketing officer and the chief sales officer. The CEO must be supportive, but the CMO and the CSO must lead the effort on a day-to-day basis. In addition to implementing mechanisms designed to achieve the conventional alignment objectives, CMOs and CSOs need to take three other steps.

Reinforce the Narrative - The CMO and the CSO must constantly communicate the importance of having marketing and sales work together seamlessly - that the company's revenue generation efforts can't produce maximum results unless marketing and sales work as a cohesive team. In addition CMOs and CSOs should make it clear that informal, self-directed collaboration among marketing and sales professionals is not only acceptable, but expected. This narrative needs to be reinforced every day in some way.

Conduct Regular Sales-Marketing Forums - CMOs and CSOs should conduct joint sales-marketing forums on a regular basis. The cadence of these forums is determined by individual company needs, but they probably should occur at least monthly at most companies. The primary objective of these forums is to provide a venue for marketing and sales professionals at all levels to interact, exchange information, and discuss problems and opportunities.

Leverage Cross-Functional Teams - The CMO and the CSO should always be looking for opportunities to use cross-functional teams to deal with meaningful problems, challenges, or opportunities. Whenever possible, these teams should be composed of individuals who don't normally work together. Not only are cross-functional teams usually the best way to address major issues, they also foster the development of personal relationships that span functional and departmental boundaries.

The Bottom Line

Creating a high-performing revenue generation system is ultimately an exercise in team building. It's essential for marketing and sales professionals to have a shared understanding regarding the major elements of their company's go-to-market strategy. And they also need an agreed-upon lead management process, and a well-designed set of shared performance measures.

But these factors aren't sufficient to create the level of sales-marketing cohesiveness and coordination that are needed for high-performance revenue generation. In addition, marketing and sales leaders must nurture a "culture of collaboration" that transforms marketing and sales into a team of teams.

Image courtesy of Tatinauk via Flickr CC.

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