Integration is a buzzword for sure. I hear it all the time. And it has achieved this status for good reason. Businesses which are integrated are more efficient. Marketing and sales plans have more impact when they are integrated. Yet time and again when we begin to work with clients, we see huge disconnects. We see processes that exist in marketing which the sales team aren’t involved in. And vice versa of course! We see marketing activities that don’t connect to in-store plans. And vice versa. Is this happening in your business? How can you tell? And what should you do about it?
Why do we fail to be integrated?
Given all the hype and desire for integration, you’d think we’d have it sorted by now. But there is clearly a very long way to go for many businesses. Why is this? There are a number of reasons for disconnects between marketing, trade marketing and sales teams, but I’d like to focus in on those that are most common in my experience.
Functional silos – a barrier to marketing and sales integration
No matter how hard we try, no matter how we shift the organization, we create silos. And silos create walls and barriers. Even attempts at so-called ‘agile’ sprint teams still seem to create silos of their own. Functions and teams exist to do certain things efficiently. The undesired consequence of that is that other things become less efficient. For example, a sales team has a regular meeting to share competitive information across the team. But that is likely to retard communication of the same information to anyone else in the organization. Silos and teams create focus on one view of the world. Focus on one thing has a natural consequence: a lack of focus on something else. By definition.
Objectives & KPIs
The longer I work in consulting, the more and more I am convinced that KPIs are the most powerful, dangerous, and misunderstood tool in the management toolkit. That’s a topic for a separate article I think, but for now suffice to say that if two teams have KPIs that aren’t aligned, it stands that there is a risk their plans aren’t necessarily going to pull in the same direction. To be clear, I’m not saying that everyone needs the same KPIs (thought it does help if everyone has at least some common KPIs) but they do need to be aligned.
Integrated processes
The third cause of a lack of integration is a lack of integrated processes. If silos are part of the organization, they are best overcome by having integrated processes. Strategic and planning processes that join the dots across an organization are a good place to start. Process and KPIs are the best tools to overcome organizational silos.
One-way communication
My last observation is that often processes are one-way. Integration requires communication. Communication is a two-way process. Therefore, one-way processes are not integration. They might create a degree of alignment, but they will never create real integration. To those of you in marketing still residing in the 1950s – sales’ job ISN’T to implement your plans! It’s a bit more complicated than that. We have retail customers, for one thing, and they have their own agendas, strategies and rules. That means that we need dialog, not transmission, in our internal processes.
How do you know if your marketing and sales teams are integrated?
So here is a test. Are you integrated? There are lots of benchmarks and assessments we could do (and would be happy to help!) but here is a start. Winning in consumer goods requires success with three customers. We need to win with consumers, shoppers, and retailers. That’s it. So, the simple test of integration is, can you see and feel the voice of each of the three customers in all of our processes, strategies and plans? Let’s take a quick test.
When you are creating the Pack & Price Architecture for a channel (please tell me you do it by channel and not at a market level!), do you consider the consumer needs and occasions, the shopper missions, needs and barriers, and the retailers’ requirements (both financial and operational). If you don’t, you aren’t integrated.
If I was to pick up a customer business plan from someone in your key account team, would I be able to detect, clearly, which consumption opportunities the plan was looking to activate, which shoppers were key to enabling this increase in consumption, and the clear benefits to the retail customers? Further, would the consumption opportunities visible in the customer business plan would be the same as I’d see in the brand plan or portfolio strategy I’d find in the marketing team? If not, you’re not integrated.
If I were to look at the process you use to develop an in-store activation, would it reference the consumption opportunity, a target shopper, as well as the voice of the retailer? If not, you aren’t integrated.
The price of a lack of marketing and sales integration
I could go on. We could look at the KPIs or objectives of a Brand Manager, a Channel Manager and a Key Account Manager. We could look at brand plans and channel plans, or seek out a clear brand/channel prioritization which has been signed off by all parties. We could gatecrash an NPD meeting and see how many trade marketers or sales leaders are there. But you get the idea.
All of this lack of integration, or integration shortfalls, are costing you dearly. Internal processes will be less efficient: your teams will waste time and won’t have time for high value tasks. Activations won’t be aligned, so you won’t see the full benefits of consumer investment in sales and vice versa. Nothing will be as effective as it could be. Big hits on effectiveness. Big hits on efficiency. And employee satisfaction. And retention. And skills.
What to do to improve marketing and sales integration
Integration isn’t easy. Or at least it takes a while to get everything right. But you can make a start right now. First thing, use the tests I’ve highlighted above, or give us a call and let us help by assessing your organization.
Review your core planning processes: strategic planning, annual planning, activation development, New Product Development and Introduction. Look at your organization structure and acknowledge the realities and implications.
Check out any of our training programs: each of them is build around a powerful, road-tested integrated process so it will immediately improve things.
Read “The Shopper Marketing Revolution” – our guide to the Five-Step Total Marketing™ integrated process.
Do at least one of these. Now. You won’t regret it.