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    Handshake by AndyrobBy Larry Kilbourne

Last week's post, Sales & Marketing Alignment in a 2.0 World: Solution or Tar Baby?, took a skeptical look at attempts to better align marketing and sales, as the title implies. My skepticism wasn't based on any theoretical objections, but rather grows out of lessons learned from having lived in both worlds and seen first hand how profound the disconnect is between the two in most organizations.

What I think is equally clear is that in a business environment where buyers are increasingly controlling the sales process, the traditional distrust and even animosity between organizations' sales and marketing functions must be addressed.  And this will likely mean that not only will the relationship between the two change fundamentally, but their roles and functions as well.

Indeed, if current trends such as lead nurturing, sales alignment, sales enablement, and marketing automation are to gain any real traction and currency, it is essential that sales and marketing leave their traditional silos, and prepare to work collaboratively in a way that will challenge their traditional roles within an organization.

It has been suggested by many that a core element in establishing a common ground between the two is the adoption of lead scoring as a quantitative means of agreeing on what constitutes a "qualified lead."  This is certainly critical, since much of the distrust and animosity between sales and marketing arises over this issue.  By providing the beginnings of a common "vocabulary," lead scoring can facilitate conversations that need to be happening regularly between marketing and sales team members.

However beneficial and necessary such conversations are, they will not be sufficient to overcome the divide separating these two related but still distinct functions unless more foundational changes occur.  So long as members of each function are evaluated and compensated under different criteria - which are frequently not aligned, either with one another or with the organization's overarching goals - at the end of the day conversations are more likely to result in recrimination than cooperation.

It should be obvious to anyone who has considered the very different ways in which sales and marketing function, that they are often at cross purposes due to systemic and not accidental factors, such a personalities.

Consider for a moment the differing compensation schemes governing both. Sales rewards its members on the basis of individual achievement, and usually over the short-term - in monthly and quarterly output.  This produces cowboys and cowgirls - not team players.  It encourages short-term thinking and short-term tactics - neither of which supports the process of lead nurturing. Marketing, by contrast, typically rewards members with bonuses predicated on how well the organization did as a whole in a given year.  There is little sense of immediate urgency, of the fact that one's compensation is tied directly to one's individual performance in most marketing departments.

On this basis alone, it is unreasonable to expect a high degree of cooperation between the two.  And no amount of CRM or marketing automation tools are going to overcome or negate the very different manner in which each of these players approaches their job based on organizational expectations.

I could go on in outlining other elements that form the systemic roots of the problem, but my purpose here is to make the point that no amount of "happy talk" about fostering cooperation between sales and marketing is going to change their behaviors so long as their structure and function within organizations goes unchanged.

What would a reformulated sales and marketing function look like?  It's certainly not clear to me.  However, a glimpse into that new world is provided by most lead nurturing scenarios that envision marketing as assuming more of a role in developing relationships with prospects, while sales is more attentive to the storyline marketing has creating around a product or service, and, to acting in concert with marketing counterparts to close a sale.

Being able to envision those relatively small changes forces us to recognize that they presume radically altered sales and marketing organizations.

Copyright © 2009 by Larry Kilbourne, Ph.D. Dr. Kilbourne is an independent marketing consultant. He may be reached at lkphd@yahoo.com.