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Solving the Alignment Challenge

How to work effectively with peers in marketing, finance and products to hit quota.

Earlier this summer, SiriusDecisions published an infographic focused on the top challenges facing chief sales officers. This is the fourth post in a five part series focused on those challenges (if you missed our other posts on the topic check out solving new rep-ramp up, sales productivity, and pipeline predictability challenges).

Alignment was listed as one of sales leadership's top five challenges:

How do I work effectively with my peers in marketing, finance and products so I can hit my quota?

Finding ways to work effectively across the organization isn't simply about getting along -aligned organizations are more profitable and grow revenue faster.

At BAO, we’re very results-driven, and we understand the positive impact alignment has on the bottom line. And we also understand that achieving alignment can sometimes be challenging, especially when different groups have different priorities. Improving alignment with other functions requires sales to understand and support the objectives of those functions.

Aligning Cross-Functionally With Account Insights

Lead Qualification is a great example of a solution that offers a cross-functional view. How often does marketing bemoan that sales isn’t following up on inbound leads, while sales complains there’s too much junk in marketing’s leads? Without timely, effective follow up, there’s no way to uncover opportunity or measure value, but research reveals that up to 40 percent of all inbound leads never receive any kind of follow up from sales.

BAO helps fill that gap by following up on inbound leads from a marketing campaign, and then scores them, so sales can focus on the most promising leads. The marketing team knows that all the leads will be followed up on in a timely manner and they’ll get insight into the ROI of the campaign, while sales can focus on the leads with real revenue potential.

BAO’s Opportunity Identification (OppID™) also offers great potential for aligning sales with other functions.
OppID™ delivers account-by-account insights to help find buyers and then position your solution for the sales win. But it can also provide key intelligence for non-sales roles, including marketing, product, and others. Because OppID is fully customizable, you can tailor the questions to get the intelligence your organization needs, from pains and challenges to competitive details to customer satisfaction data and more. And, of course, better account-level intelligence means better, more accurate forecasting, which always makes finance happy!
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