As marketers, it’s too easy to race out of the gates with a big initiative or campaign and ultimately draw a line in the sand by only hanging our hats on consumption and sharing metrics. This creates a series of significant problems for any B2B or product-centric company including:

PROBLEM: Marketing teams are unable to operate under an agile approach that shapes and adapts strategies and tactics based on sales impact.
IMPACT:  Marketing teams run circles around themselves by not having a complete data-driven approach to adjust and optimize.

PROBLEM:  Sales and marketing teams figure there is no need to coordinate or refine existing processes because this is “how it’s always been done.”
IMPACT:  Teams get frustrated with one another as they battle over who owns what part of a sales process and where budget dollars should get allocated.

PROBLEM:  Marketing impact on revenue is tossed out the window as lead generation and sales metrics are never funneled into the feedback loop.
IMPACT:  Critical marketing programs are ultimately chopped as executives focus on the sales-centric metrics tied to revenue without looking at the full impact funnel.

Enter Smarketing – a term coined by the razor-sharp smarties at Hubspot to frame an approach for sales and marketing teams to work better together. I highly encourage you to check out this great presentation on the topic that was released in April of this year. Take it, rip it, apply it and start 2014 off with a fresh perspective on better sales and marketing integration.

http://www.slideshare.net/HubSpot/the-power-of-smarketing

photo credit: Aidan Jones via photopin cc