Marketing and Sales Explained with Soccer - Part II
Ximena Hernández Buffa
How to define the game and roles of the team
In the previous article we saw how we should work on sales in alignment with marketing with the same synergy as if it were a soccer team. According to Salesforce, this alignment is more necessary than ever because the consumer has changed: “the consumer uses digital media in their purchase, is socially connected, is mobile and is more empowered, with almost unlimited access to information and people.”
Let us continue with the analogy of soccer in business strategy. How are roles, objectives, and KPIs distributed?
The Technical Director is the General Manager. The team captain is the business manager, who has a rear-guard leader (defense), or head of marketing, and a leading forward player, or head of sales. But they are a team training together, whose goal is scoring goals.
Everyone’s achievement is scoring goals. The achievement of the sales team (marketing and sales) is sales. Intermediate outcomes make sense if a goal is scored, or if the sale is achieved.
Define where the goal area is. Your team has to work synergistically and be aware of the business priorities (in case the company carries out various activities such as events, summits, congresses, one-to-one sales, sales with alliances).
It is important to define intermediate KPIs for marketing. This measures and rewards the balls you approach to the goal area. This could be translated into tangible indicators such as contacts, meetings, attendance at events, leads, business opportunities.
There is only one technical director and one captain, as well as there is a general manager and a business one, and the rest is one team, there being no more managers or captains. Let’s have a business manager, and if the team is large, a sales manager and a marketing manager who report to the business manager.
Conclusions
After working on B2B marketing with more than 100 companies in Latin America, I see that most of them do not design a business area following this vision; the sales and marketing areas have separate management and the workflow as a whole is characterized by the overlapping of efforts and misinformation. The marketing area usually is not clear about what the company’s billing goal is, and the sales area is not interested in the activities carried out by the marketing area, or in the generated leads, nor does it rely on marketing to accelerate their opportunities. Marketing is seen as an area that does not “move the needle” of the company.
If your company has less than 7 years in the market, hurry up to build a structure similar to that of a soccer team, with a business manager. Marketing and sales are part of the same team. Your company is like a child who is still easy to be shaped. It defines a common goal, roles, overall planning, team meetings as a whole, weekly and daily habits, and KPIs. Invest in consulting with training in business habits and you will see outcomes fast.
If your company is over 7 years old, the challenge is greater, because when a person grows it is more difficult to change. Do the same, but by supporting yourself with in-depth consulting, it will take longer to see results and people will be reluctant at first, but eventually the team will settle in and you will see optimal results.
Sales and marketing must train together, that is, they need to have business meetings and divide the functions so that everyone achieves the goal. There are no magic formulas, do not base your strategy on creative forward players/sellers; Messi, Suarez and Ronaldo are the least. Apply a professional team strategy, as Real Madrid, Barcelona and Bayern Munich do. That is the way your success will be growing and constant, as that of the European professional teams.
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