The way people buy has changed dramatically through Internet and globalization. Prospects are spending more time on the Web doing independent research, obtaining information from their peers and other third parties. Companies are therefore meeting prospective buyers earlier than ever. What are the implications for marketing and sales?

Sales & Marketing can no longer afford to operate as departments that happen to work for the same company. Whereas many organisations have been trying to create alignment for the past 15 years, I have seen very little improvement. Here are some continuing statements, despite all efforts:

• Marketing is not delivering sales-ready leads, says sales. Sales is not following up on leads, says marketing
• Marketing is spending a lot of money but does not measure ROI
• Sales has very little impact on marketing spend and vice versa
• We are unable to sell value over price. We are unable to differentiate ourselves in the market

Let it be clear that sales-marketing alignment has failed. So it’s more than time to start looking at a new approach of Buyer aligned collaboration. What does it take to implement Buyer aligned collaboration?

• Convert your marketing campaigns into continuous conversational marketing
• Take control by marketing a vision (in role and pain-based messages) for each of your segments
• Adapt your language to readiness to buy and use lead-scoring based on the same foundation
• Involve sales to double check on readiness to buy & let them decide when time is right to take over from marketing
• Measure and benchmark all activities along the buying cycle and implement incremental improvements

In practice that means: increase revenue performance by making the buying cycle the centre of your corporate universe. Apart form synchronising Sales & Marketing targets, here are a few tips to make a start maximising Lead Development in your company:

• The buying cycle is key for every action taken by Sales & Marketing!
• Marketing develops sales ready deliverables synchronised with the readiness to buy
• Implement a tool to help track your prospects’ readiness to buy (assuring company wide acceptance)
• Product input is problem based, not feature based
• Use CRM to track the above, as a pragmatic cross-departmental tool. Correct information is more vital than lots of it.

Just remember: you can no longer neglect the buyer if you want to make a difference in today’s market!
Looking forward to reading your comments.