How many meetings have you been a part of where the head of sales, no matter what title they carry, points fingers at the marketing team and exclaims that no leads are being delivered, therefore marketing is failing? How many meetings have you been a part of where marketing details their program and engagement plan with no feedback from the sales teams? You may have been a part of meetings where both happened simultaneously.

The take-away should be that the strategies in place for sales and marketing are working at cross-purposes. No matter how well-trained the sales team is or how innovative the marketing team wants to be, success will be elusive if there isn’t a common strategy. Sounds good, but how do you bring everyone to the table and work together? Start with laying out the plan each group is following, and then start to build bridges.

Sales and marketing strategies evolve with the needs of the business, but as they change, there is an element that might be overlooked. Capabilities are evolving as machines are upgraded or replaced. If the sales and marketing teams aren’t educated as new capabilities arrive, the strategies will never catch up with what can be done. The result is that sales must compete on price instead of value and differentiation, while marketing may miss opportunities to create evocative stories that raise the company profile. To determine where you fall on the strategy gamut, create a pitch deck for your strategy and then see if it makes sense to your production team.