This has several negative effects:
The business misses the chance to build authority
The buyer is less aware of the business’s offering(s)
The sales team must spend more time educating and nurturing the lead
All of which leads to a longer mobile number data buying process and a lower chance of closing a deal.
3. Process Misalignment
Sales and marketing alignment is difficult enough with in-house teams; LinkedIn studies suggest the average targeting overlap between sales and marketing teams is just 16%. This problem can often be exacerbated when one party is a third-party vendor.
The complaints are numerous and varied, including:
Misaligned incentives: Marketing agencies want to produce a high volume of leads and may not worry as much about the quality.
A lack of unified strategy: Marketing agencies may be brought in for short-term tactical purposes, which means they are not fully onboard with or aware of the longer-term strategy.
Poorly executed handoffs: There is not an established handoff process to smoothly move leads from marketing nurture to sales outreach, which often means sales does not know how to follow up in the most appropriate and effective way.
Why Do Bad Hires Still Happen?
These problems have been widely reported for a long time, with extensive research on the importance of sales and marketing alignment. Yet few businesses seem capable of fixing the issue and hiring an agency with which their sales teams enjoy working.
There are few key reasons for this:
1. Focus on Performance, Not Process
Agencies are routinely hired based on their previous performance or client list, with relatively little consideration of their processes or how they engage with sales. While CMOs need to be assured the agency can produce results, it is equally important that they are a cultural fit for your business - and know how to collaborate with sales.
The best agency is not always the one with the most industry awards or recognizable logos on their website; it is the agency that is going to enable your sales and marketing departments to work together effectively toward a shared goal of increasing revenue.
This is often a question of process: will the agency spend enough time getting to understand your business and internal processes? Will they customize their approach to meet your goals? And will you get their full focus at all times?
2. Short-Term KPIs
Hiring an agency is a big investment, which means CMOs must be able to effectively measure the return and determine as quickly as possible whether to retain the agency. But this leads to an overemphasis on short-term results that may not be in the business’s best interest.
Lead quality is the obvious example here: Agencies are routinely tasked with increasing lead generation, with their performance measured primarily on the volume of leads generated. But from sales’ perspective, this often leads to less emphasis on quality and more lax qualification processes.
