Building A Modern Sales & Marketing Machine

This post originally appeared on the Sales Section of the Inbound Hub.

The majority of Enterprise CMOs I meet with are struggling to transform their marketing teams from product centric to customer focused organizations. There is a world of difference between the two.  

As CEO, I'll bet you're having a hard time keeping up with the dizzying pace of innovation in social media and trying to understand the potential impact of these various social media platforms on your business.  

You're not alone-according to a recent study, 68% of Fortune 500 CEOs are not currently using any social media platforms (2013 Social CEO Report-http://www.ceo.com/social-ceo-report-2013/). This is a shocking statistic, but consistent with what I hear from Enterprise CEOs that I meet with everyday.

I've been very fortunate in my career to work for several Enterprise tech start ups that experienced rapid growth-HubSpot, Akamai (NASDAQ: AKAM), Pegasystems (NASDAQ: PEGA)-and I get asked all the time what are the key similarities between them.

As CEO, one of your jobs is to keep close tabs on your competitors and to stay ahead of them by driving continuous innovation across all aspects of your business-product, sales and marketing.  

When you analyze your company's marketing, how do you know if it is giving you a competitive advantage? Many CEOs that I speak with are not satisfied with their marketing because they can't easily measure the impact of their marketing spend.  

The way your buyers purchase products today is fundamentally different than it was 10 years ago.  Has your marketing playbook changed as well, or does it look very similar to how it did 10 years ago? This Slideshare presentation will explain very clearly how your buyer has changed, what the implications are of these changes, and what you as an Enterprise marketing executive can do about it.

According to a recent study by the Aberdeen Group, companies with strong sales and marketing alignment achieve 20% annual revenue growth while companies with poor sales and marketing alignment see a 4% decline in annual revenue growth.  This Slideshare presentation will outline clearly to Enterprise sales and marketing executives how to achieve tight Enterprise sales and marketing alignment so that they can maximize revenue.

Your CEO is demanding to know the ROI of your marketing spend. And you know your CEO doesn't want to hear fluffy stats like number of likes you’ve been able to acquire on Facebook. She wants hard data on the efficacy of the company's marketing investment-"Is it working?", "Are we improving our ROI on marketing dollars?", "How many leads are we getting for the money we're spending"-and wants proof of the contribution you and your team are making to the revenue growth of the company.  

Do you have the data? If not, how are you going to capture the data and what metrics are you going to use to prove to your CEO and your peers on the executive team that you and your team are impacting the bottom line?

As CEO, you're pushing hard to grow the top line as fast as possible while staying vigilant on costs. What if there were a way to accelerate top line growth not by spending more, but by simply getting significantly more out every dollar your company is currently spending?  

One huge opportunity to get a lot more bang for your buck is your company's marketing investment. Historically, you and your CFO have probably had a very difficult time trying quantify and measure the return on investment (ROI) for your marketing spend.  

As CEO, your job is to ensure that your executive team is aligned on key company goals and is executing in tandem to accomplish these objectives.  That they're all rowing in the same direction so your company can achieve its big hairy audacious goals (BHAGs).  So why does it often feel like your heads of Sales and Marketing aren't on the same page?  Because Sales and Marketing don't communicate.