Sales and Marketing on the same page

Brian Carroll over at 'B2B lead generation' makes a great point about the relationship problems between sales and marketing.

While I have talked about the trust problem between sales and marketing in a previous post, Brian points out that there is also the issue of the two teams being on the same page when it comes to definitions. What marketing calls a lead isn't always the same as what sales calls a lead because often they have differing opinions because of their job descriptions. Brian points out that the CEO - but it just has to be the person in charge overall, whatever their title - needs to take the lead in making sure that everyone is on the same page.

In my current role, marketing, sales and management have one definition of a lead and it makes things easy for everyone. The trick is to make sure that the the description of a lead is definitive and that there can be no argument from any party as to whether a lead passed from marketing to sales fulfills the definition.

Sometimes this makes it more difficult for marketing but at the end of the day we know what we have acheived.