This week on the Digital Velocity Podcast, Sean Doyle of FitzMartin joins Erik and Tim to discuss how businesses can drive sustainable growth and revenue by aligning sales and marketing operations to match buyers’ needs.
The buyer’s point of view is an integral part of the equation when evaluating sales and marketing strategy and performance. Sean says,
“One of the crazy conversations that I think goes on in marketing nowadays is, well, we need to have sales and marketing alignment says a business executive. What they do is they get the salespeople together with the marketing people and they all talk. Well, who got left out? The buyer, the person with the money.”
When a brand’s intention becomes identifying and meeting buyers’ needs, sales and marketing will organically be more effective. Sean explains,
“The aha moment is there’s a systematic way to approach the way people buy. If you’ll align sales to the buyer, if you’ll align marketing to the buyer, if you’ll align customer service to the buyer, and if you’ll align your technology to support the buyer’s needs, you’ll have marketing and sales alignment. You’ll have customer service alignment with the need to the buyer. All of that works out. That’s the result. The way to get there has nothing to do with your three departments, sales, marketing, and customer service, or your technology. It has to do with the buyer, so deeply understand what the buyer’s needs are.”
True sales and marketing power begins with knowing the customer. Then the focus can shift to tactics and implementation. Sean says,
“This is just another big lever to pull by putting that mindset of let’s start with insights. Let’s start with the voice of the customer. Let’s look at our competitors. Let’s look at our company. Let’s measure these things up, and then from those insights we can develop a strategy of where the markets are, of what our offerings should be, and what our position in the marketplace should be. Then, finally, tactics make sense and let’s worry about efficiency and measurement. But until you have those insights, until you have that strategy, it’s just not time to worry about execution. Execution is not ever going to lever your business to scale, but insights and strategy will…So, insights plus strategy, then execution.”
Listen to this week’s episode to learn more about how focusing on the buyer will create sales and marketing alignment and bring continuous value and returns to a company.
About the Guest:
Sean M. Doyle is principal at FitzMartin a leading consultancy focused on optimizing sales and marketing investments of emerging middle-market, B2B businesses. FitzMartin has proven its ability to positively impact ROI within their clients’ currently allocated resources, earning their clients on average $287 of top-line revenue for every dollar invested.
Over a 30+ year career and more than 5,500 client engagements, Sean has found his niche in helping executives identify opportunities to achieve strategic, personal, and financial objectives.
In pursuit of a repeatable, systematic, scientifically-sound approach to sales, marketing, technology, and communications, Sean developed Centricity. The Centricity model has been proven to be effective at scale with Fortune 500 clients and, more commonly, for businesses in the $10-50MM growth stage. Sean, a man of family and faith, strives to lead selflessly. On the weekends, he’s often teaching the art of fly fishing to anyone who wants to tag along.