Aligned to Achieve. Eiler Tracy

percent! What would a 30 percent higher win rate have meant for your company last quarter?

      You might be perfectly content to stick with your current business process, keeping sales focused on closing deals and marketing focused on filling the funnel. But before you decide to take no action, consider the benefits of sales and marketing alignment: You could increase revenue, profitability, win rates, and more. Why wouldn't you align? Compared to the performance of an aligned organization, your current success isn't actually all that great. We asked Jim Dickie, former managing partner at CSO Insights, a sales and marketing effectiveness research firm, why all companies aren't jumping on the alignment bandwagon.

      “I honestly don't know,” Jim says. “This should be a boardroom-level discussion. It's that important. Our research is showing that B2B win rates are steadily declining and are now around 47 percent, on average. That's terrible. The odds of winning at the craps tables in Las Vegas are 49 percent, so companies would be better off gambling!”

      Jim says that companies think too much about how much it costs to drive alignment and not enough about the price they pay for resisting change. “The cost of doing nothing is magnitudes higher than of doing something,” Jim added. “When I see companies doing nothing, it makes me cringe.”