To those who say it can’t be fixed, I say: You’re right. No silver bullet here. If there were one, I would be surfing in Tofino, not writing this post. However, I have found something that works.

And to those who say it doesn’t apply to them, I say: You’re wrong! Are you are involved in sales or marketing – as a sales manager, a marketing manager, a one-woman team or a do-it-all-yourself business owner – your left hand is sales and your right hand is marketing. Ever tried to work with one hand behind your back? Hard.

What best practices do we recommend to get sales and marketing working together?

1. Get-on-the-same-team.
Sales and marketing are two different teams. With different coaches. Different playbooks. What happens when two hockey teams compete? They fight. They miss the puck. Somebody wins. Somebody loses. A better idea is to think of sales and marketing as a SINGLE team passing the puck BETWEEN team members to orchestrate a spectacular play. EVERYONE wins. Except the competition.

2. Create a common playbook.
One team can only handle ONE playbook. Yes, throw out the separate sales and marketing playbooks and make a new one. The new playbook is based on the buyer’s buying process. That is, the steps the buyer goes through to buy from your company. By making it all about the customer, you avoid the deadlock that happens when the conversation disintegrates to being about sales versus marketing or marketing versus sales. Nobody can argue with the customer being first.

3. Talk about more than leads.
Sales and marketing alignment issues are usually all about leads. And why there aren’t enough leads, or that the leads aren’t good enough. The reason the lead topic is negative is because all kinds of other things are negative. Fix those things and the lead issue will be fixed or be ready to be fixed. What are those other things? Clearly defined targets. Clarity on the business problems of those targets. Who influences their buying decision and, therefore, needs to be influenced. Packaging of solutions for specific target-problem scenarios. Differentiation. And nurturing.

4. Work on your sales and marketing message.
Most companies and even one-man teams tend to dive for the tactics first. If you put sales and marketing tactics before your sales and marketing message, you will have a machine and no gas to run it. That is another reason why lead management becomes the central issue. Deal with the cause first – no focus and poor messaging – and then build your tactical machine.

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