Management Rock: Create SLA for sales & marketing alignment

What are Marketing Rocks?

If you’re running on EOS^® (Entrepreneurial Operating System) you know how to use Rocks for your Quarterly meetings. We’re big fans of EOS^® and are frequently asked for ideas on what marketing Rocks would look like.

This Rock is ready for you to copy, paste, and adjust as needed.

We hope this saves you time and keeps you focused on your marketing foundations.

Marketing Management Rock: Create SLA for sales & marketing alignment

Marketing should support sales. But this can only happen if there are clear communication expectations between the two department leaders.

Is the sales team getting junk leads and not telling marketing? Guess what? They are going to continue to get junk leads. If sales want better leads, then marketing needs to know what a better lead looks like.

Feel free to cut, paste, adjust, and use for your next Quarterly Rocks:

Rock: Create SLA (Service Level Agreement) for sales & marketing alignment

V – Vision: Simply, sales and marketing working together is going to get you to your vision a lot faster than if they are working in different directions or against each other.

S – Specific: Define what needs to be included in the SLA. Keep it to the most critical topics. Include metrics for each department as well as anecdotal feedback from customers. Sales is a treasure trove of information on customers that will be helpful for marketing to use in their tactics and messaging.

M – Measurable: With increased communication, lead quality should improve resulting in better conversion rates from lead to quote or lead to close.

A – Attainable: Education may be needed for both marketing and sales in terms of what each department does, how they operate, what their systems are like etc. Education is necessary to dispel any assumptions about the other department that derail communications and create resentment.

R – Realistic: An SLA is relatively easy to create, but the adoption and ongoing use of it takes management oversight. This is attainable if there is a commitment from both department leaders.

T – Timely: Think about how often the teams should meet or communicate and how. Do your teams prefer in-person/virtual weekly or bi-weekly meetings? Can you set up your CRM to track the some of the metrics and communication needed?