Organizations of today are looking at ‘Digital Transformation’ as their key to innovation, growth, and the discovery and creation of new business models and opportunities. An essential segment of this transformation journey is the adoption and implementation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Automation. This adoption leads to a new dynamic in the marketing and sales arena where customer experience, customer acquisition, and customer retention fast become breaking points for effective competition and the overall growth and profitability of any business.
Sales and marketing have historically been cousins to each other. Born in the same family but want to do it all their own way and eat the whole cake while they are at it too. But the ‘digital’ phenomenon has changed that, or at least it is trying hard to. And the cousins have to entertain this intervention not because they want to, but because their hyperconnected customers now require to be wooed and engaged in a way that is personalized, content-driven, social and mobile. Dynamics that can get complex very quickly and does not leave enough legs for this cousin rivalry to stand on. Still, many ninjas representing each group attempt to hold their old school domains and grudgingly refuse to play ball, or grow up for that matter. Only if they knew, what is about to hit them. A recent lean data survey suggests that “51% of marketers are not satisfied with the level of communication between these two teams and 53% of sales professionals are not pleased with marketing’s support.” More troubling than this is that the American Marketing Association says that “90% of content created by marketing is never used to drive sales”. And if that wasn’t enough, Jeff Ernst in his book ‘The New Rules of Sales Enablement’ points out that “Salespeople spend 30 hours a month searching for and creating their own selling materials”. Now, isn’t this a sad state of affairs. It is a sign of two groups wandering aimlessly and enabling a discord of this sort which can be catastrophic for any organization of any size and squanders resources unnecessarily.
Organizations of today are looking at ‘Digital Transformation’ as their key to innovation, growth, and the discovery and creation of new business models and opportunities. An essential segment of this transformation journey is the adoption and implementation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Automation. This adoption leads to a new dynamic in the marketing and sales arena where customer experience, customer acquisition, and customer retention fast become breaking points for effective competition and the overall growth and profitability of any business.
Sales and marketing have historically been cousins to each other. Born in the same family but want to do it all their own way and eat the whole cake while they are at it too. But the ‘digital’ phenomenon has changed that, or at least it is trying hard to. And the cousins have to entertain this intervention not because they want to, but because their hyperconnected customers now require to be wooed and engaged in a way that is personalized, content-driven, social and mobile. Dynamics that can get complex very quickly and does not leave enough legs for this cousin rivalry to stand on. Still, many ninjas representing each group attempt to hold their old school domains and grudgingly refuse to play ball, or grow up for that matter. Only if they knew, what is about to hit them. A recent lean data survey suggests that “51% of marketers are not satisfied with the level of communication between these two teams and 53% of sales professionals are not pleased with marketing’s support.” More troubling than this is that the American Marketing Association says that “90% of content created by marketing is never used to drive sales”. And if that wasn’t enough, Jeff Ernst in his book ‘The New Rules of Sales Enablement’ points out that “Salespeople spend 30 hours a month searching for and creating their own selling materials”. Now, isn’t this a sad state of affairs. It is a sign of two groups wandering aimlessly and enabling a discord of this sort which can be catastrophic for any organization of any size and squanders resources unnecessarily.
