B2B Marketing/Sales Alignment Impact on Trucking and Logistics

Alignment – or rather lack of alignment – between sales and marketing is common in many organizations, trucking and transportation or otherwise. In fact, it’s not uncommon for separate departments to be set up which never talk to each other or have ‘frosty’ relationships at best.

As the inside of organizations become more transparent on purpose or not (five minutes of Googling can tell a prospect everything they want to know about your company that you might not want them to know), the connection between marketing and sales is tightening out of necessity.

When the two are aligned, they help one another, greasing the wheels for sales efforts and helping craft a picture of a company that follows a narrative to be carried by your sales team to the finish line.

Some evidence of the power comes from a recent 2015 B2B trend article from business2community.com:

Marketing and Sales have historically had a somewhat contentious relationship, at least in many organizations. But as B2B buyer behaviors have changed, the need for increased alignment and closed-loop communication between marketing and sales teams is absolutely critical. Many company leaders cite alignment as an ongoing priority, but in 2015 it will become more mission-critical than ever — and rightfully so. According to SiriusDecisions, B2B organizations with tightly aligned marketing and sales achieved 24% faster revenue growth and 27% faster profit growth over a three-year period.

Don’t have a marketing department? You’re not alone, but that doesn’t mean you’re immune, either. A lack of marketing support for your sales team will become more apparent as competitors refine their sales/marketing messages and align their efforts in a more organized manner. Those with a full-circle effort will put more and more distance between their less organized competitors (hopefully not you).

On the surface, organizing and aligning such efforts may seem daunting (as in, thinking of how to connect social media and mobile marketing with your sales effort). But in reality, technology has created opportunities to manage and conduct dynamic marketing with a fraction of the resources previously needed. The key is recognizing (a) that quality is critical and can’t be exchanged for token efforts and (b) it must be sustainable and match the resources you want to put behind it. (Too many companies jump on a bandwagon they can’t keep properly rolling.)

So what to do? We’ll cover that more in this space, but a good start is to simply start procuring your own services. ‘Remove yourself’ from the company or have someone else you trust go through your buying cycle from discovery to close to see where you’re exposed because of lack of sales and marketing alignment. And use someone who matches the demographic profile of your prospect (ie: don’t have a 30 year sales veteran go through the process if a younger, 10 year procurement veteran is a better representation of your buyer.)

Be honest about it, because your prospects will not be looking through your rose-colored glasses when they do the same. From there, you’ll at least be able to start thinking about gaps in your marketing and sales program and where you may need to seek professional help to re-craft and bring them together.

B2B Marketing Outlook for 2015

A generalized survey with indicators for the B2B world on the whole, KO Marketing’s findings are applicable to opportunities available to trucking and logistics companies looking to compete more aggressively for business in the coming year.

Key charts are below. Both from KO Marketing.

Software Solutions Utilized by Respondents for B2B Marketing:

Allocation of 2015 Demand-Generation Spending

Marketing and Transportation: An As-Yet Marriage Made In Heaven

Your salesperson walks into a meeting with a potential shipper. Great opportunity, big money, new routes, and a springboard for new opportunities at other prospective shippers.

He (or she … we’re just going to go with ‘he’ so we don’t have to write he/she from here on out) … He has a great pitch. On top of his game. Nailed it. Confidence high. Drinks at the airport kind of meeting.

What do you think the chances are of the person on the buying side of the table deciding to work with your company based solely on the performance of the salesman?

Years ago, chances may have been good. Today, not so much.

More likely it goes something like this: Buyer needs to talk to others who missed the all-star performance and isn’t available for follow up calls/meetings. Or, buyer is torn to other responsibilities for days/weeks and the stellar meeting begins to fade from memory. Or even more likely, buyer researched your company before your salesman even entered the building, leaving the dog and pony show as only a validation or repudiation of an already built image.

Talk to most anyone in the trucking and transportation industry and they’ll agree this is the case, that factors outside of what is commonly and narrowly defined as ‘sales’ has influence on whether outcomes will be positive or negative. Ironically however, there is little being done to help such situations. Bids are lost. Excuses are made. Processes repeated. And the cycle continues.

Why? Certainly not for recognition of a need.

Typically, it continues because trucking and transportation companies (particularly small or mid-size companies) don’t have options to have marketing-related activities SURROUNDING their sales process refined and modernized at a reasonable cost, and have it done without taking a tremendous amount of time.

We’re here to help change that.

Mammoth No. 5 exists to help companies within the trucking and logistics vertical better credentialize their businesses, support their sales efforts and secure more business through effective, affordable, and efficient marketing solutions.

If your company is in trucking or other shipping/logistics verticals, we hope to talk to you about how we can help you take things to the next level. If you’re not ready to talk, that’s fine too. Feel free to hang out on our blog, follow us on Twitter or stalk us in general via the Internet. We’ll be providing links to helpful articles, creating content of our own, and on the whole trying to be as supportive as we can without giving away the farm.

Either way, we hope you’ll join us in whatever capacity works for you. We’re looking forward to the journey and hope we can help along the way.