Sometimes I think those of us who run marketing firms or work in a marketing department forget that although we are the beginning of the sales process, we also need to be involved in the middle and the end. For at the end of the day, our bottom lines and the value of what we do are measured in sales, not direct mail campaigns, sell sheets or packaging.


This is especially true for those of us who do not have a sales component within our firms. To continue our businesses, we need to sell, to get new clients. And once we are serving those clients' needs, I believe we need to create marketing plans that include the sales process, and that we need to serve those clients through both the marketing and the sales process. Therefore, I am a frequent observer of sales data. Go-To-Market Strategies recently emailed the following to subscribers:

"Optimizing sales performance continues to be a top goal for sales and marketing teams. To achieve this goal, one must truly understand the "levers" of sales performance and effectiveness–hiring, compensation, sales process, and forecasting, to name just a few.
"We recently reviewed a copy of CSO Insights' Sales Performance Optimization–2007 Survey Results and Analysis for the most current sales performance benchmarks and an understanding of how they've changed over the last couple of years."

For me, the most interesting data contained the following:
1. Only 60% of sales reps are making or exceeding quotas.
2. Only 37% of firms report they have implemented a formal sales process.
3. 85% of those who do have a formal sales process report it has a positive impact on sales performance.
The first two numbers represent failure; however, the good news lies in the third number, which gives us a great clue as to how to solve the challenge., Bad sales results reflect badly on marketing departments and marketing consultants, which should motivate us to be directly involved in the sales process.
I have strong opinions about how we increase sales performance, including changing traditional sales compensation packages to reflect bottom lines and margins (sales staff pay is directly tied to the average margins achieved through their sales) instead of top line results (compensation tied to overall revenues brought in, which encourage discounting and lower margins). I also believe that sales and marketing staffs should be in one department and should work closely together on every step of the process, from understanding the customers, to strategic marketing and sales planning, to closing sales.
That said, I wonder how other marketers feel about these ideas. What are your experiences? Do you work with sales staff to create marketing plans and to close deals? Should we? What are the most important strategies and tactics for working together and for increasing sales? Do you find that your clients or your CMO and COO are open to marketing and sales working closely together? Is there pushback to breaking down silos and working more collaboratively?