As the market forever changes, so too must marketing. As prospects spend more of their time researching before ever getting in contact with an organisation, it's becoming increasing important for marketing efforts to be more insight based, and more closely aligned than before to Sales. This isn't time for guesswork - if you want to create true ROI on your efforts, it's time to get scientific.
Sales and Marketing alignment: the ultimate clash of the titans
Methodology is used throughout scientific communities to determine and showcase which processes create which outcomes. Methodologies outline the activity that needs to be undertaken to achieve a result, and the means by how you measure and review success.
The same rules apply to marketing. By creating an honest set of parameters for our campaigns, we can devise and determine required outcomes, and work backwards to build a more robust methodology. For a long time, the blurred lines and lack of clarity around responsibilities have slightly marred the relationship between Sales and Marketing. By implementing a "Smarketing" methodology, you can create a Sales and Marketing SLA - methodology replaces conflict.
The eternal argument between departments on suitability, understanding and interpretation of leads, prospects and qualification all fly out of the proverbial window – to be replaced by a collaboration between departments akin to a flag-waving merger. After all, we're all trying to achieve the same end goal...
A collaboration methodology provides shared responsibility and accountability for meeting company-wide goals, which takes pressure off individual departments and distributes the load. What also happens along the way is a more developed understanding of the business. With each step of a campaign being measured, adjustments factor in a joint sense of purpose, and a mutual respect for the challenges of each other’s roles develops.
So, why bother with a methodology?
Well as lovely as the above sounds, none of it will be worth the e-book it’s written in if everyone isn’t aligned to the same principle of working. Your goals can be the same, the outcomes determined but there are many ways to skin a cat, cook a goose, you get the point!
Implementing a methodology allows you to not only share the same working platform but also, when you are in a joint forum amongst the rest of the business, it allows you a clear and concise reference point to explain the principles in practice and the mechanism to feed into other complimentary workflows / groups.
The process of creating the methodology alone can sometimes force some uncomfortable questions. It forces you to address real objectives, align your interests, be honest and realistic about the outcome and what you need to have in place to make that happen. The process, in fact, of building a methodology is in itself perhaps more important than the creation of it.
The last thing to think about with a methodology is that it is not a rule book. Remember to build in feedback loops, allow for testing, create opportunities to question as this will be the only way to improve the outcome. If you become too fixed on a methodology and enforce it rather than nurture it, this can ultimately blinker your ability to see beyond it.
