One key thought that has driven much of my marketing thinking is this: marketing should be as accountable for revenue as sales. This is especially true with modern buyers who use information abundance to seize control of the buying process and delay engagement with sales until much later in the buying process.
In late 2006, I wrote a series of articles about this process, which were then compiled into a single article for Revenue Performance How Marketers can Earn a Seat at the Revenue Table. In the article, I ask "What can marketers do in order to be seen as part of a machine that drives revenue and profits, not just the people who throw parties and buy swag?" The answer, I argue, is to recognize that at most companies, Sales is the function that owns the revenue pipeline. (Sales and revenue often go together, so much that some people use the words as synonyms.) This means that marketing can earn their seat at the revenue table by acting MORE like sales with these key actions:
- Speak the financial “language of busiess”
- Forecast results, not just costs
- Make hard business cases for spending
- Align incentives
- Use standardized best-practice methodologies
- Do “more with less” using automation technology
Check out the entire article, How Marketers can Earn a Seat at the Revenue Table, for detailed explanations of each of these ideas.