Why Marketing and Sales Need Shared Leadership

For the second year in a row, sales enablement landed at the top of marketers’ priority list.

The only way to know whether marketing is successfully enabling sales and improving salespeople’s effectiveness is by having them share accountability for revenue and sales quota attainment goals. Yet just 29% of respondents in ITSMA’s Sales Enablement Survey said that sales and marketing share the same goals and metrics. Worse, only 34% of companies said that their marketing and sales groups even have an understanding of each other’s goals and metrics. Sales and marketing need to be on the same team.

Shared leadership is the best way to assure that the burden to improve performance will be distributed fairly between marketing and sales. It also creates a single point of authority and accountability for improving the processes that marketing and sales share.

However, according to our survey, for the majority of companies, sales and marketing are two separately managed organizations reporting to the CEO, division president, or GM, making this alignment and collaboration more challenging. ITSMA believes that sales and marketing should be reporting to the same person, beneath the CEO, such as a vice president of sales and marketing. It’s time to bring sales and marketing together.

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ITSMA specializes in helping companies market and sell services and solutions more effectively. We work with the world's leading technology, communications, and professional services providers to generate increased demand, strengthen customer relationships, and improve brand differentiation. ITSMA annual program clients include business leaders such as AT&T, Cisco, Deloitte, EMC, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microsoft, SAP, and Tata Consultancy Services, among others. Our comprehensive research, consulting, and training on topics including ITSMA Account-Based Marketing℠, Brand Positioning, and Solutions Development provide the insight and experience companies need to improve business results. ITSMA is based near Boston, and has offices in London and Tokyo. Learn more at www.itsma.com.