🕵🏻♂️ Marketing & Sales Planning
How it usually happens, how it should be, and how to plan long-term programs
Marketing and sales planning usually happens in silos, which frustrates both teams.
Marketing to Sales: Here is our marketing program. We'll be forwarding you MQLs.
Sales to Marketing: Here is our target list, and, by the way, we need a new deck.
As a result, Sales don't understand how marketing programs lead to revenue.
Marketing desperately tries to generate a marketing-sourced pipeline targeting wish lists while taking design and content orders from sales.
There are several reasons why teams don't plan together:
Different incentives, KPIs, and compensation
Horizontal disconnected teams that work on one area of the "funnel"
Historical silos: "This is how we worked for years"
But that doesn't mean that they should continue running a broken playbook. It can be fixed relatively fast.
Today we're going to cover:
4 areas for joint analysis and planning
How to plan long-term marketing and sales programs
But before we'll dive in, here is a major announcement!
Join our IN-PERSON ABM workshops in Amsterdam (30th Sep) and London (3rd Oct)
Join us in Amsterdam (30th Sep) or London (3rd October), for an in-preson practical workshop where you’ll take one of the ABM roles and work with your peers on ABM program planning under our guidance.
What you’ll learn and work on during the workshop:
How to align your leadership, sales and subject-matter experts on your ABM program and get their buy in
How to define the right clusters or verticals where you have higher chances to run a successful program
How to structure your ABM team: functions, roles and responsibilities
How to segment and prioritize accounts your ABM team should focus on by opportunity likelihood
How to create awareness among the buying committee members and engage them
How to identify accounts that are likely to become sales opportunities this quarter, warm them up and generate a sales opportunity
How to nurture and engage accounts that are not currently in market but might become sales opportunities in the next 6-9 months
How to personalize your interactions with prioritized accounts
How to track your program performance: reports and metrics
Minimal viable stack you’ll need to execute an effective ABM program
Save your spot below by clicking on the city where you’re interested in joining us.
4 areas marketing and sales should look at for planning
Here is how to fix a broken marketing and sales planning.
Define a pilot team (ideally, VP of Marketing and VP of Sales) who will run the initial analysis of 4 areas.
1. Sales Pipeline velocity across:
Markets
Verticals
Clusters (e.g. product use cases or jobs to be don)
Analyze the revenue metrics:
Win rates
# of sales opportunities
Sales cycle length
ACV (average contract value)
Then, answer the following questions:
Where should we focus? What are the lowest-hanging fruits? Where should we double down our efforts? Where should we pay attention?
How can we improve our revenue metrics in target markets/verticals/clusters?
Why are some of our revenue metrics low/declining? What are the root reasons?
* We explain the sales pipeline velocity here.
Review together:
a) ICP (Ideal Customer Profile).
Who are our best customers?
Why do they buy our product?
Who is involved in the buying process?
How can we make our message more relevant to them?
What do we need to know about our target accounts to create a relevant message, nurturing content, and offer?
How do they buy?
What should they be educated about to consider your product? What change management should happen?
How can we influence their buyer journey and nurture them across these different stages?
3. Motions.
Plan together playbooks for generating new logos and running expansion programs.
What are the best accounts to focus on?
How many accounts do you need to target across these motions?
4. Lists.
Define criteria for selecting accounts for 2 lists.
a) Active focus list:
Current pipeline -> accelerate deals
Expansion -> upsell/cross-sell
High-intent new logos -> generating sales opportunities
b) Future pipeline list:
Accounts with a low intent/no engagement that fit your ICP and are qualified.
Plan together:
How can you create awareness among these accounts?
How can we create awareness and demand in a selected market/vertical/cluster to expand the pool of these accounts?
How and where can we connect with them?
How can we nurture them?
How can we collect the necessary information to understand if they have a potential need for our product? If yes, where are they in the buying journey?
This way you go from being aligned in theory, to running revenue operations in practice together.
Now, let me explain how to plan the long-term marketing and sales programs.
How to plan long-term marketing and sales programs
*This template with a detailed guideline is available in the B2B marketing strategy course.
Now, after finishing the first exercise you might end up with a list of the long-term initiatives. You need to plan and present them properly to get the support and buy-in.
Here is how.
1. 𝗣𝗿𝗲𝗽𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗾𝘂𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝘀𝗽𝗿𝗶𝗻𝘁𝘀 𝗶𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗱 𝗼𝗳 𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗻𝘀.
Sprints include detailed tasks, metrics, outcomes, and responsibilities. They are capacity- and priority-based, not based on wishes.
2. 𝗣𝗿𝗲𝗽𝗮𝗿𝗲 3 𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝗼𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗺𝗲𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗰𝘀:
Positive signals that prove that the program works (e.g. engagement from target accounts)
Leading indicators: actions the marketing team will do regularly (e.g. posting 3x weekly on LinkedIn)
Lagging indicators: sales pipeline velocity and revenue metrics.
* Check this episode of Full-funnel Live where we explain it in detail.
3. 𝗣𝗿𝗲𝗽𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗮 𝘃𝗶𝘀𝘂𝗮𝗹 𝗳𝗿𝗮𝗺𝗲𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸.
Connect the dots and explain how the planned activities will impact pipeline velocity and revenue and help to achieve the goals.
4. 𝗣𝗹𝗮𝗻 𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗺's 𝗰𝗮𝗽𝗮𝗰𝗶𝘁𝘆.
You might need to involve multiple team members. Make sure they have enough time to execute specific tasks and that they will own them.
Avoid multi-ownership and where possible the dependencies.
5. 𝗖𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝘄𝗲𝗲𝗸𝗹𝘆 𝗽𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗮𝗿𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗴𝗿𝗮𝗺 𝗿𝗲𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄 𝗺𝗲𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀.
Break down leading indicators into weekly pillars: actions everybody involved in the program should perform.
Plan in the calendar 30-60 minutes meetings to review the pillars, define and remove bottlenecks, and cross-share the results.
I'll cover it in detail below.
6. 𝗣𝗿𝗲𝗽𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗺𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗵𝗹𝘆 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗴𝗿𝗮𝗺 𝗿𝗲𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗴𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗺 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘂𝗲 𝗺𝗲𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗰.
Not every program should be measured the same way. Running thought leadership programs and demand-capturing ads would have a completely different set of metrics.
Develop the reports accordingly, but make sure that you have an ultimate revenue report that shows marketing-sourced revenue and pipeline, revenue metrics, and sales pipeline velocity.
* Check this guide where we share an example of the report.
One of the most common reasons why long-term marketing initiatives don't get support from stakeholders and sales is a lack of clarity, not because they don't get marketing.
Vague presentations full of marketing slang like:
"We are going to run a demand gen program, ungate all content, and deliver value consistently on social" are often shut down, because stakeholder:
don't understand what exactly the marketing team will do
how it helps to achieve the GTM goals and hit the revenue targets
Avoid ambiguity and flip your marketing planning.
Present the goals and outcomes you want to achieve.
Next, present sprints with clear tasks and task owners.
Then, present the key leading indicators, positive signals, and reports.
Explain how these sprints will impact the revenue and GTM goals.
Your marketing plan should be data-driven, not vanity-driven. Then, you get all the support and buy-in.
Hit your pipeline and revenue targets with full-funnel ABM.
If any of these challenges sound familiar:
You are aligned in theory with sales but don’t do anything in practice aside from receiving wish lists from sales and sharing with them your marketing plan. In reality, you work in silos and miss the revenue targets and are being pressured by your executives.
You understand that your marketing and sales playbook is broken (mqls, gated content) but despite many attempts you don’t know how to fix it.
Your outbound, paid ads and organic pipeline drastically decreased while CAC increased mostly because most of your market is problem unaware and not buying.
You lack brand awareness among target accounts and sales can’t get even a reply.
You clearly see that you're already behind your revenue targets.
You tried ABM and demand generation, but despite investments in tools, the program failed.
We can help.
We'll develop a custom full-funnel ABM strategy aligned with your resources, budget and stack and execute it together to drive results THIS quarter.