The CMO council recently released the findings of the Sales & Marketing Silo syndrome in organizations. Since data between sales & marketing need to be fused for better returns on marketing investments. At Cequity, we too see this gap existing in companies as a part of our client assignments. Enterprises need to effectively harness this data for better ROI. Many companies have recently started to take steps in breaking this silo and ensuring there is better synergies between these two departments. Here are the survey findings:
- Less than 20% of respondents said that their sales and marketing organisations were “extremely collaborative”, and most others felt that the two groups had “intermittent relations and interactions”.
- Looking at the ways in which sales could add value to marketing messages and communications, survey participants felt that engaging strategically with customers to better understand their problems and needs was the most valuable contribution.
- Two of the most important roles that marketing can play in optimising sales performance were cited as “fielding campaigns that generate and nurture leads and opportunities”, and “providing customised value-selling content and presentation materials”.
- Only 12% of sales and marketing professionals said that they have a well-integrated, real-time view of all customer interactions, and only 37% reported good visibility into prospects, sales pipeline, deal flow and conversion rates. At the same time, 20% indicated that marketing currently hands leads to sales but has no insight into conversion and sales closures.
- 13% said that most sales leads are never captured, qualified, or acted upon, while 11% reported that they have no on-premise or on-demand CRM system in place.
- Among those who have CRM applications, only 13% viewed the application as “highly valued and widely deployed”, while 42% reported growing acceptance and adoption. And, while CRM systems tend to be mandated and adopted across the sales function, they tend to be more selectively embraced by marketing teams.
- Data analytics, reporting, and forecasting tend to be the biggest deficiencies in optimising the functionality and usability of current CRM solutions. The top three areas highlighted by nearly 50% of respondents were: the ability to easily create analytical reports; customisation of the application; and forecasting capabilities.
- While 50% said they had “pretty good” or “extensive” visibility in to customer accounts and business activity, the remaining 50% said that they often had trouble finding customer account data, did not have enough information, or had no information at all.
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