Inbound Marketing and Sales Alignment Keys to Business Growth

  

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"Organizations in 2010 remain under economic pressure to accomplish more with less, as companies endeavor to achieve and sustain recessionary profitability through top-line revenue growth. Sales and marketing alignment is critical for this growth as it encompasses the areas of common goal identification, defined responsibilities, and established workflows that are essential in producing optimal results."

Last month the Aberdeen Group's Chris Houpis released a report on the alignment of sales and marketing departments based on a survey of 453 companies completed in August 2010 and titled "Sales and Marketing Alignment Collaboration + Cooperation = Peak Performance". There is a tremendous wealth of information in the report and we certainly encourage companies to access and read the full report but here we want to offer some insight gleaned from the report.

1. 100% of best in class companies experienced revenue growth compared to only 11% of laggard companies;
2. Best in class companies had a 20% average growth in revenues while laggards had an average 4% decline in revenues;
3. Best in class had 47% of the forecast sales pipeline generated by marketing and in laggard companies this number was 5%;
4. 26% of all closed business came from marketing generated activity for best in class companies while the number for laggard organizations was only 5%

What is of particular interest is the PACE (Pressures, Actions, Capabilities, Enablers) framework "Enablers" adoption by best in class companies:

1. Social media monitoring and measuring- 41%
2. Lead generation, nurturing and scoring- 47%
3. Campaign management and automation- 47%
4. Web analytics program- 65%
5. CRM or Sales Force automation- 76%
6. Email marketing tools- 84%

Why do we point to these? They are all inbound marketing oriented. If you have read any of our other posts, we regularly offer tips, news or insight about all matters related to inbound marketing. One day it might be SEO, another content creation  or social media etc. but our objective is to offer you information of value as your company considers how best to grow your business. This report validates what we believe in, inbound marketing works, or the best in class companies are all really lucky...you decide. Isn't it time for your company to embrace inbound marketing? Want some help?

At IME, we don't pressure or cajole you. If you want to grow your business using best in class inbound marketing solutions, contact us today and let's discuss your situation!