Many B2B sales and marketing organizations still exhibit a serious lack of alignment when it comes to messaging and content, according to a recent survey of more than 730 sale and marketing professionals.
The study, conducted by Corporate Visions, Inc., included questions about messaging, content and tools development within B2B sales and marketing organizations. According to a summary of the study’s findings, three major issues are contributing to a lack of alignment within many of these organizations:
- About a third of the respondents said their organizations have a collaborative process for creating messages that includes members of the sales and marketing teams. Another third, however, described this process as “semi-collaborative,” and one third described the process as “non-collaborative, politically charged or non-existent.”
- When asked to describe which team members had input into an organization’s message creation process, a majority of respondents included job titles such as marketing management (75%), product managers (60%), sales management (60%) and marketing associates (54%). Only 37% of these firms, however, included field sales reps in this collaborative process. “Because field sales representatives are essential to ensuring that relevant messages are delivered to customers, these statistics – which indicate that they are rarely involved in the creation process – are alarming,” noted Corporate Visions’ summary of the study.
- Just 3% of the respondents said their companies always use a repeatable process for creating content and messages across the organization. The vast majority of the respondents (61%) said their organizations sometimes or never use such a process.
“The results of this quarter’s survey indicate that while some organizations are taking steps to better align sales and marketing, many continue to operate in inefficient silos,” said Tim Riesterer, chief strategy and marketing officer, Corporate Visions.
“Enterprises need to employ a cross-functional framework for message development where marketing and sales work together to create messaging that resonates with customers,” Riesterer stated. “The repeatable framework should begin with identifying the customer’s main goals, then pinpoint how these goals are at risk. These risks will redefine the customer’s needs that only your solution/service can meet, which in turn will help you create new, effective messages and tools for any campaign.”
