Companies over invest in marketing technology. Why? Because it’s the easiest thing to do. Strategy is hard. Integrating marketing and sales is hard. Scaling is hard. You know what’s not hard? Buying a tool. Implementing a work management, DAM, MA or CRM can sometimes seem like the answer to what’s ailing the marketing and sales teams.

If we could just get more emails out the door faster.

If we could just put our hands on the right content components.

If we could just manage our resources better.

Many of you reading this have probably imagined the thought bubbles above. These what-if goals are great goals, of course, in the right context. But they’re a misuse of money if this is a marketing or sales leader’s first priority. Getting the benefits of technology is imperative, but pulling a trigger on the next black box is low on the list of what marketing and sales leadership should do first.

Strategic groundwork, processes and agreement take priority

Before purchasing the next shiny object, essential questions need to be answered. And the answers have to be agreed-upon by sales and marketing. Mutual understanding is vital to the alignment that maximizes revenue for the organization—a goal far more important than a technology procurement decision.

It takes several sessions and strong leadership to get in sync on the following:

• What is the mutually agreed-upon definition of a lead?
  If sales thinks it’s one thing and marketing thinks it’s the other, time and money are being wasted.

• What is the total addressable market? 
  Companies need to pinpoint prospecting efforts based on company size, vertical, location, environment and need.

• What market segments deliver the highest return?
  A scattershot approach isn’t efficient. Prioritizing high-return segments reduces cost of sales by 30%.

• What intelligence have we gleaned from prospecting
  Each touch is an opportunity to gather info (e.g. what satisfaction levels are among buyers of competitive solutions) that can help increase close rates.

• What benefits will decisionmakers experience if they buy from us?
  Everyone in marketing and sales should understand, agree and be able to articulate product/service value.

• What are our differentiators?
  Understanding the competition helps determine whether clear articulation is priority, or whether an outsell-our-rivals approach is best.

• What techniques, tools and messaging help team members perform their best?
  Everyone should sing from the same hymnal, i.e. work from the same playbook documenting processes, call flows, content, etc.

• What marketing support does sales need to get their job done? 
  Determining what case studies, whitepapers, data sheets, and other content is needed to support the selling process is necessary.

• What percent of MQLs become SQLs? What percent of SQLs should close?
  Agreeing on benchmarks, metrics and reporting is key to successful collaboration between marketing and sales.

• How many dials per day? How many voicemails per day? How long’s the touch cycle?
  Getting cadence right makes the difference—most organizations underestimate what it takes to move targets through the funnel.

• What needs to be done from a nurturing standpoint to be sure a lead is worked to close
  Nurturing, which is marketing’s job, can triple return on lead development efforts—and make closing far more efficient.

When you know these answers, you have a clear idea of how marketing and sales fits into the big picture. Then you can put your ducks in a row—and work together to transform your organization’s prospect experience.

BTW, don’t forget to put a judicial branch in place to assure that both organizations adhere to what they agreed upon.

It doesn’t do any good to mutually develop processes made in the best interests of the company, only to have the two groups slip back into the bad habit of blame. (Marketing: “Sales doesn’t follow up on our leads.” “Sales: Marketing’s leads are bad.” Sound familiar?). A “judge” can keep things on track.

It’s a lot. It’s hard. But working together to agree on these points is worth it. Marketing will generate better leads faster. Sales will close more deals. The company will make more money. Everyone—including your prospects and customers—will be happier for the effort made.

Now, take a look at technology

Once you’re done, it’s time to take a look at the tech tools that facilitate the agreements between marketing and sales. Next steps may be to buy a new solution … or they will more likely be to figure out how the platforms in place can get the job done.

My friend Eric Rotkow, managing partner at Zee Jay Digital, a consulting firm that leverages technology to help marketing better compete in a digital world, is at the forefront of this thinking. He maintains that most organizations already have the tech they need, and that a unified metrics framework is what it takes to get the most out of investments already made. 

Aligning sales’ and marketing’s way of thinking is the first step. Leveraging tech to make both organizations more effective by automating agreed upon processes, and integrating the data between each component of the marketing stack comes next.

Once done, the organization’s leadership in charge of revenue can, together, make rapid decisions needed to generate, qualify, nurture—and close—leads needed to meet growth goals.