11 Years after "Ending the War Between Sales and Marketing". What's Changed?
It's 11 Years Since "Ending the War Between Sales and Marketing". What Went Wrong?, AdobeStock_159569019
The ground-breaking paper, “Ending the War Between Sales and Marketing” by the pre-eminent sales and marketing subject matter experts of their time Philip Kotler, Neil Rackham and Suj Krishnaswamy was published by Harvard Business Review in August 2006.
By now we were all going to live in complete harmony.
But LinkedIn in their 2017 report, called "The Payoffs of improved Sales & Marketing Alignment", said that the disconnect between sales and marketing is "a US$1 trillion problem in the USA alone"!
So, what went wrong?
Sadly, in all that time nothing much really has changed as far as getting sales and marketing truly aligned. The once open war may have gone underground and become a cold war. We may have masked the conflict with CRM and Martech, but underneath the people remain combatants. The war continues to rage on to this day, out of the sight of too-busy-to-notice senior executives, it has become an guerrilla war.
So we have a picture of a disconnect that is too often ignored or intentionally papered over by both sides of the conflict. Unfortunately, denial and pretense only serve to perpetuate the problem, instead of resolving the issue.
Why is it that CEOs either aren't aware of the problem (and of the underlying opportunities) or that they think the effort is not worth the trouble?
LinkedIn in their 2017 report, called "The Payoffs of improved Sales & Marketing Alignment", said that the disconnect between sales and marketing is "a US$1 trillion problem in the USA alone"! So, why is it that CEOs either aren't aware of the problem (and of the underlying opportunities) or that they think the effort is not worth the trouble? You see, all to often have I heard senior leaders say words like: "It is what it is.", "There's nothing that can be done about it.", "It's always been like that.", or "It is not a priority right now."
Whether it is apathy, ignorance, malice or straight out capitulation that prevents senior leaders from addressing the sales-vs-marketing divide in their organizations, the consequence of letting the wound fester is financially punishing: Slow or negative revenue and profit growth caused by ineffective marketing campaigns, missed sales targets and lost market share.
Yet, it is not that hard to re-energize an under-collaborative organization and to leverage the revenue-generating powers of effective sales and marketing collaboration. The authors of the aforementioned paper made it very clear what needs doing. They even created a handy chart to help align, and even integrate (as they called it) sales and marketing in four steps into one united revenue-generating machine (see below).
Image courtesy of HBR
As is so often the case in business, knowing WHAT to do is easy. It's the execution, the HOW to do it, that all too often lets organizations down. I was there myself. After spending more than 15 years in multinational corporation on both sides of the sales - marketing divide I had enough of putting up with this situation and I decided to do something about it: I created the OneTEAM Method® and wrote a book about it. Then I sent a copy of my book to one of the three authors of "Ending The War Between Sales and Marketing." I sent it to Neil Rackham, the forefather of sales methodologies, the inventor of SPIN Selling and the co-founder of Miller Heiman.
This is what he wrote back:
"I think you’ve produced an eminently practical approach with the OneTEAM Method. It’s simple without being simplistic and it tackles head-on a problem that most people try to resolve with the usual “communicate better” platitudes. Congratulations."
— Neil Rackham
I confess that Neil Rackham is one of my personal heroes. So I am pretty chuffed that he thought my Method has merit. It has since proven itself in many organizations across multiple vertical markets as diverse as transport and logistics, automotive, IT, professional services and energy.
As an example here is just one of them: Brent Clark, CEO at Wattblock, an energy advisory firm talks about his breakthrough performance after just six weeks of using The OneTEAM Method®. I am not saying that the results that Brent achieved with my Method are the norm, but it goes to show just what the size of the prize can be.
What hidden value is waiting to be unlocked from better collaboration between the sales and marketing teams in your organization? Ask me how you can find out.
OK, so what point am I making here?
At the end of the day, what point am I making here?
The point is - more than ten years on from Philip Kotler, Neil Rackham and Suj Krishnaswamyin's paper - that in most organizations:
the problem of sales and marketing misalignment is still very real
it is still worth solving as there are significant business benefits just waiting to be unlocked
it is solvable, you just need to want to win the war
So, dear reader, what will you do from here on forward ?
- END -
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