The SiriusDecisions Summit 2013 took place over three days last week in San Diego, where more than 1,500 B2B sales and marketing professionals gathered to collaborate and learn about the latest in best practices for marketing, sales and product management.  The organizational alignment of sales and marketing processes and teams was this year’s Summit theme. As SiriusDecisions co-founder and managing director Rich Eldh said, “There is a dramatic difference in the health of a business when you get the integration between these three functions right.”

Keynote speaker General Stan McChrystal, the former commander of U.S. and international forces in Afghanistan, delivered a great speech.  General McChrystal inspired the audience by regaling them with anecdotes from his military career, drawing parallels for effective sales and management leadership.

Our own CEO Fred Shilmover was on hand to give a presentation on “Implementing the SiriusDecisions Demand Waterfall Framework for Inside Sales Driven Sales and Marketing Teams.” Fred’s presentation focused on the importance of having Definitions, Processes and Systems in place for proper flow and attribution from top of the funnel marketing to conversions, sales and revenue. The case study focused on InsightSquared’s use of Salesforce.com, Shoretel Sky and InsightSquared’s own Sales and Marketing Analytics Product to successfully implement the Demand Waterfall.

InsightSquared depends on a combination of Inbound Marketing and Outbound (Teleprospecting) Demand Generation. Creating discrete flows and measurement is challenging, but critical in order to measure effectiveness and ROI on a particular channel.

To accomplish this, sales and marketing teams must have agreed-upon definitions of and consistent metrics for tracking and measuring  each inventory state, as well as each transition – for example, from Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) to Teleprospecting Accepted Leads (TALs). Each team that can more effectively align their processes and implement the framework with the right systems. This alignment of marketing and sales processes, while tracking which inbound and outbound sources demand and leads are coming from, is delineated in the SiriusDecisions Demand Waterfall, pictured below.

Yet, many organizations continue to struggle implementing the SiriusDecisions Demand Waterfall with their Salesforce.com CRM. Without proper implementation of the Demand Waterfall and alignment between marketing and sales, attribution and accurate measurement of ROI becomes a nightmare.

For too long, marketing and sales have been treated as disparate parties, instead of equal partners. As the theme of the Summit – and Fred’s presentation – emphasized, sales and marketing should not only collaborate on goals, definitions and processes, but also share each other’s anxieties and successes.

Does your organization struggle to implement the SiriusDecisions Demand Waterfall with your Salesforce.com CRM? Are you having trouble aligning your marketing and sales teams? Email us or drop a comment below to learn more.