Aligned to Achieve

Foreword

Alignment should be the number-one operational issue for every business-to-business company. The era of fostering tension between sales and marketing is over. Businesses achieve more success and operate at a higher level—meaning more growth, more profits, and more productivity—when the teams interacting with the customer are tightly aligned. That extends from alignment on defining who the customer is, to what the customer sees and hears, to how that customer is approached, engaged with, and ultimately won.

We are in the midst of a long and unprecedented period of rapid, technology-fueled business transformation. Markets have become more competitive, products more commoditized, new business channels and methods are appearing, and technology has become ubiquitous and affordable by even the smallest companies. What that means is any company of any size can effectively compete against rivals and everyone has a harder time standing out from the growing noise in every market. Even more, buyers and buying cycles have transformed because buyers have more power and more information, which enables them to be independent of, disconnected from, and less reliant on you as a seller.

All of this has led us to today, where B2B businesses are fundamentally challenged in their go-to-market efforts. Noise in the market has skyrocketed, confusion abounds, differentiation is elusive, and buyer attention is a limited resource.

So what's a company to do?

Leaders must align their teams to ...