Aligned to Achieve

Chapter 4An Aligned Organization Requires a Different Kind of Leader

Remember our mantra: Sales can't do it alone and marketing exists to make sales easier. Also remember that, as the leaders of the frontline teams, alone you have a lot of power, but together you can both be better and more successful.

As we've said before, it's pretty clear business is rapidly changing, both from the outside in and the inside out. We are experiencing every day the new realities of dealing with better-informed, savvier, and better-connected customers and competitors. But, you're also dealing with the changing demands and requirements of your own role as a sales or marketing leader.

To be successful, we need to have increasingly broad and advanced skills, but more importantly, we need to have vision beyond our own domains. CMOs and sales VPs must understand how data and information flow through systems, how technologies can be used to impact success, and what the complete customer life cycle from onboarding to support to renewals looks like.

Take YouTube as an example of a new technology that has impacted B2B. It's barely 10 years old and when it first launched, no one ever thought a site filled with funny, grainy, shaky videos of kids and cats would morph into a critical tool for B2B marketers. Fast-forward to today and you'll find more than 1,000 videos on Oracle's YouTube channel. Accenture's videos have been viewed one million times; Siemens' channel has nearly 50,000 subscribers and more ...