Corporate Visions, Inc., a leading sales and marketing messaging company, recently announced the results of its third quarter survey on marketing and sales alignment, which polled more than 730 business-to-business (B2B) sales and marketing professionals worldwide. The findings highlight the lack of collaboration between the sales and marketing teams of industry-leading companies as they work to differentiate their solutions in today’s marketplace. In fact, a staggering one in three respondents reported that their message creation process is non-collaborative, politically charged, or nonexistent.  

To delve deeper into the issue of marketing and sales alignment, and determine exactly where the disconnect between teams is occurring, Corporate Visions posed survey questions about messaging, content and tools development within organizations.  

Notable findings from the Q3 survey:  

• Message creation process is non-collaborative. Responses revealed that one-third of respondents’ companies have a collaborative process for creating messages that involves both the sales and marketing teams; one-third have a process that is non-collaborative, politically charged or nonexistent; and one-third have a process that is semi-collaborative. This means a whopping two-thirds of the companies represented in the survey are struggling to achieve a truly collaborative process for message development. By operating in distinct silos, marketing runs the risk of creating messages that will fail to effectively reach customers, and by extension, that salespeople are not comfortable delivering or will not use.

• Field sales representatives are left out. Respondents indicated that, of the professionals involved in messaging/tool creation, field sales representatives constitute only 37 percent of the room, compared to marketing associates, which represented 54 percent. 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.

• Messaging and sales tools are created by accident. A meager three percent of respondents said their company uses a repeatable process when creating content, messages and tools across the enterprise. The implications of these results are that most messaging and tools created to support sales teams are done more by accident than on purpose, and enterprises are risking inconsistent and diluted messages.  

“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. 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.” 

For more information about Corporate Visions visit www.corporatevisions.com.