Stop Leaving Sales Out

The #1 most frustrating thing we consistently see B2B Marketing teams make is when they leave Sales out of the strategy meetings.

When Marketing teams plan out campaigns or launch new products or even create sales collateral, they almost always leave Sales out of the strategy meetings. WHY? Because salespeople most of the time disagree with Marketing and aren't shy to voice their opinions. They are foot soldiers and the best foot soldiers are aggressive. Whether that's hunting down a new prospect or voicing their opinion about what kind of photography should be used in a new ad campaign, salespeople will not hold back. Good!

B2B Marketing teams have two choices:

1. Avoid the opinionated salesperson - This will be easier to develop new campaigns without roadblocks, ideate whimsical headlines for newsletters and inevitably allow you to focus on the most important thing to Marketing......MQLs.

2. Bring Sales in to the room - Although the first option is the easier path, it's the least effective. Sales can give you realtime feedback on what is working, what is not working and what success looks like for them.

Most B2B Marketing teams tend to live in a bubble and only look at Marketing metrics. They don't attend the daily or weekly Sales huddles to hear about deals in the funnel. They instead look at form fills and website visits and email open rates to justify the Marketing spend and effort.

By including Sales in the Marketing strategy meetings, these 4 things will happen:

1) Salespeople will start to feel heard and a relationship of trust will begin
2) The way you measure Marketing effectiveness will change
3) You will start working as a TEAM to generate revenue
4) Sales will learn more about Marketing and why they do what they do

As you get your second half of the year started up, I hope that you start to include Sales in the meetings.