We had the pleasure of speaking with Eduardo Conrado, Motorola Solutions’ senior vice president, marketing & IT, about how Motorola Solutions tackles marketing and sales alignment, their business opportunities and challenges, how Eduardo and Motorola Solutions live their story, and what to expect from Eduardo’s presentation at our upcoming Marketing & Sales Alignment Conference.
Here is Part #2 of the two-part interview. And, in case you missed it, here is Part #1. Enjoy!
Q. What do you do well to align marketing and sales, and where do you think you still need work?
If you look at the sales and marketing relationship, you can put it at three levels: people, process, and systems.
When you look at people, we first look at the strategy and what we’re trying to accomplish. Strategy will lead into organizational structure. So the marketing organization, its structure – the people portion – does it match up with our go-to-market structure that we put in place to meet the strategy of being a solutions provider? We still do tweaks here and there, but we match up very closely to the company strategy and its structure.
On the processes side, we also look at our go-to-market approach on both the direct and indirect side. You can look at the demand waterfall from the moment that a customer recognizes a need, the first touchpoint, and then how the customer flows through the organization. We match up the customer process and the sales process that we have within the company. We look at the touchpoints, how customers are consuming information, what type of content is delivered, how the sales or the channel partners pitch, and so on. On processes, we’re probably 70 percent there. In a complex organization, as you’re trying to change your go-to-market approach, your teams need to reexamine their own processes.
The last piece is the systems. More and more, the people portion and the process component are dependent on an IT component. Our systems must tie in. We’re not using marketing systems or sales systems – we’re using end-to-end processes that have a system underpinning or foundation. Now, when a customer gets in touch with marketing or sales, they’re flowing across systems. If you want to get a single view of the customer, the systems are just enabling that process. You’ve got to architect the systems with the customer view. On the systems front, we’re probably 70 percent there. The beauty is, our marketing and sales teams are working together to plan systems architecture and the processes that we’re bringing to life with the systems.
Q. How long ago did you decide to integrate those systems and turn it into one customer view?
We’ve been working on that approach for the last three years. We’ve been fine-tuning it as we go along to structure the systems themselves to ensure they are collaborating. We look at a process from the end-to-end view (versus the piece that one person or department manages). Ultimately, you then back into this holistic view of systems architecture. That’s why I took responsibility for IT in addition to marketing. If you’re going to be a customer-centric company, then you need to focus on the systems of engagement and the front office component – how you make IT an enabler.
Q. What’s the number one piece of advice you would give to your peers from your experience?
I think you start with the single strategy for the company that marketing and sales deliver. Once you have that, it makes it easy to collaborate in partnership with the sales and product organizations. Then it goes back to the three pieces – people, processes, and systems. Start looking at all the touchpoints around the customer; they are not necessarily functionally aligned. This allows the marketing organization to have a clean view of the customer and achieve clear alignment with sales objectives and how we define roles and responsibilities around processes and systems, so we can collaborate and work together on that front.
Q. What will you talk about at the Marketing and Sales Alignment Conference?
I’ll discuss the journey we’re taking at Motorola Solutions and how we’re bringing our strategy to life. My session will look at how we structure ourselves organizationally, some of the processes we looked at to address customer needs, and how we brought them to life on the systems side. You’ll see all three pieces and how they play together. As part of that, you’ll see how we deliver the message to all audiences – not just the part that’s direct to the customer, but also how we enable the channel partners and the sales teams to tell the story.
Q. You’re a veteran of these conferences. What are you looking forward to most?
I’m hoping to get a few ideas on how companies are implementing programs and strategies. It’s always good to take an “outside-in” view and have ideas come from somewhere other than ourselves.
——————————————————-
Join us for our Marketing & Sales Alignment Conference on Sept. 17-19, 2013 in Chicago. The $200 early bird pricing discount expires on June 30. Register now!
