The key to becoming a more vital cog in the engine that keeps your company moving forward is aligning marketing goals with sales goals.
By Ed Pierce, Fleet Industry Marketer
While my career’s worth of experience proves differently, marketing is still perceived as a discipline focused on positioning. Marketing education, marketing tools, and even today’s digital applications all concentrate on measuring branding, messaging, and communications effectiveness.
Because the goal of marketing is to promote a company brand with a particular market niche or industry, however, it automatically takes a back seat to sales in the eyes of salespeople, the CFO, and even the CEO.
Do you ever have to fend off sales reps’ complaints about Marketing’s ineffectiveness in helping them achieve their sales goals? Do you ever wish you could report to senior management about the number of deals closed in the past month rather than the number of positive impressions among the target audience you achieved?
The key to becoming a more vital cog in the engine that keeps your company moving forward is aligning marketing goals with sales goals. That begins with accepting the truth in B2B business like fleet: marketing and sales goals must be aligned. Just remember that “promotion” — one of marketing’s “5 P’s” — comprises both sales and marketing. A good place to start in aligning marketing and sales efforts is to adopt a customer-centric focus.
The best sales reps know their customers more so than anyone else in the company with the possible exception of the day-to-day account managers. The best marketers know how to present the company in the best light at any point in the buying cycle.
We will dig a little deeper into the possible synergies derived from a marketing-sales focus on customer-centric focus.
If you have any questions, comments, experiences or opinions about fleet industry-related marketing that you’d like to share, write to me at [email protected].
