SAN JOSE, Calif. (April 18, 2023) -- Most sales and marketing organizations haven’t been able to pivot fast enough to the new digital buyer. This means they risk falling short of their revenue mandate. More than 70% of marketers don’t feel very confident in their current sales and marketing model to sell effectively in the digitalized customer journey, according to a new Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council report, produced in partnership with KPMG LLP.

The report, “Sales & Marketing: Driving Revenue Through Collaboration,” examines the marketing and sales relationship and how it should evolve. The report found that the ability to share customers insights, gathered by data science as well as AI and machine learning, with the sales team to inform the pipeline is one of the defining traits of the new sales-marketing relationship.

Download “Sales & Marketing: Driving Revenue Through Collaboration” at: https://www.cmocouncil.org/thought-leadership/reports/sales--marketing-driving-revenue-through-collaboration

Key findings include:

• 70% of marketers don’t feel very confident in their current sales and marketing model to sell effectively in the digitalized customer journey


• 60% say marketing and sales don’t co-own customer strategy and data


• 61% of marketers say fragmented technology across marketing, sales and service restrains better sales-marketing alignment

“Sales and marketing will have to redefine their relationship to enable new customer-centric purchasing paths. This requires an entirely new way to collaborate across customer strategy and data, initiatives, technology, activities and metrics,” said Donovan Neale-May, executive director of the CMO Council.

CMOs should adopt four sales-marketing alignment initiatives to better support the digitalized customer journey and self-reliant buyer:

• Collaborate to achieve business objectives (e.g., revenue, customer acquisition, market share)


• Collaborate on marketing and sales campaigns that drive lead gen


• Define shared KPIs for marketing and sales


• Align on customer personas

“To sell effectively to the new self-reliant digital buyer and enable the purchasing paths customers seek, marketing and sales teams need to have the same goals, speak the same language, and hold each other accountable,” said Jason Galloway, Customer Advisory Lead and Marketing Consulting Practice Lead, KPMG LLP. “The keys to building a strong sales-marketing relationship include co-ownership of customer strategy and data, the agility and ability to hand off real-time data insights and employing the right technologies to share metrics and ensure consistent communication. The next twelve months are critical for marketing and sales teams to integrate data and optimize touchpoints across the customer journey.”

Methodology

The report is based on a survey of over 300 marketing leaders across industries and geographies. Additionally, we conducted in-depth interviews with marketing and/or sales executives from Teradata, Schneider Electric, Valpak, Capital Group, Cox Business, Brunswick, and others.

About CMO Council

The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council is the only global network of executives specifically dedicated to high-level knowledge exchange, thought leadership and personal relationship building among senior corporate marketing leaders and brand decision-makers across a wide range of global industries. The CMO Council's 16,000-plus members control approximately $1 trillion in aggregated annual marketing expenditures and run complex, distributed marketing and sales operations worldwide. In total, the CMO Council and its strategic interest communities include more than 65,000 global executives in more than 110 countries covering multiple industries, segments and markets. For more information, visit www.cmocouncil.org.

About KPMG LLP

KPMG LLP is the U.S. firm of the KPMG global organization of independent professional services firms providing audit, tax and advisory services. The KPMG global organization operates in 143 countries and territories and has more than 265,000 people working in member firms around the world. Each KPMG firm is a legally distinct and separate entity and describes itself as such. KPMG International Limited is a private English company limited by guarantee. KPMG International Limited and its related entities do not provide services to clients.

KPMG is widely recognized for being a great place to work and build a career. Our people share a sense of purpose in the work we do, and a strong commitment to community service, inclusion and diversity and eradicating childhood illiteracy. Learn more at www.kpmg.com/us.

Media Contact:

Kevin Sugarman

ksugarman@cmocouncil.org