The Sales-Marketing Huddle
Workshop Template
For our readers, interested in implementing the ideas and tools presented in this book, we offer a template for what we call the “Sales-Marketing Huddle.” We do not view the Huddle as a typical workshop or seminar, where sales and marketing personnel are called into a meeting and have to listen to endless presentations by leaders and colleagues. On the contrary, we view it as an opportunity for your sales and marketing teams, as well as the respective functional and organizational leadership, to come together and have a series of structured and frank conversations about various important issues that affect the joint performance of your sales and marketing teams. The ultimate aim of the Huddle is to establish a foundation for improving the dynamics within the sales-marketing interface for the long-term.
We suggest that you set aside at least one and a half day for the Huddle. As we said before in this book, there are no quick fixes that will instantly harmonize your sales-marketing interface. We view the Huddle as an important and necessary first step in setting your sales and marketing teams on a path to success. We also emphasize that by setting aside a chunk of time for this activity, you will be sending a strong signal to your sales and marketing teams about its importance and your commitment to it.
We have designed the template in such a way that the Huddle may be conducted by your sales or marketing leadership. However, in our experience, a better way to orchestrate the Huddle is to hire an outside expert in this area to help you with this crucial activity who can customize it to your specific company or industry context. This will ensure that the Huddle is conducted in an objective manner that addresses all key issues and benefits the company.
In this book, we repeatedly emphasized that sales and marketing organizations within each company are likely to be different. And in many companies the sales force is likely to be much bigger in size compared to the marketing team. Therefore, if it is not feasible to bring the entire field force together with marketing at one location for one and half days, sales and marketing leadership, along with marketing executives may travel to the various regions and conduct these Huddles with their respective sales teams.
Whether you have the entire sales and marketing teams at one location or you conduct a number of different Huddles, two cardinal rules must be stated at the beginning of the Huddle and enforced throughout:
1.The Huddle is not a blame game. It is an opportunity for the sales and marketing teams to let down their guard and make an honest assessment of the status quo to identify their shortcomings as a team.
2.The Huddle is an investment in the future. The Huddle’s tone must be positive, pragmatic, and forward-looking, so that its outcomes can take the sales-marketing interface forward, not backward.
Pre-Huddle Preparation
We suggest that you implement all the tools from the C3 toolkit we offered in Chapter 5 and collect data from your sales and marketing groups prior to the Huddle. You must also ensure that the collected data have been analyzed using the multiple guidelines offered in Chapter 5 and tentative interpretations have been arrived at. Please make sure that the data are analyzed separately for the sales and marketing groups, as well as for different hierarchical levels.
What follows is a format for a 1.5 day Huddle.
Day 1: Exploring your sales-marketing interface
Step 1: Huddle kick-off (30 minutes)
It is helpful to start the Huddle with a live address by the company’s leadership (either a CEO or a COO), who emphasizes the importance of the Huddle for the participants, the sales and marketing functions, as well as the organization as a whole. Sales and marketing leadership may also make initial remarks that serve to emphasize that they view the Huddle as a crucial activity and communicate their commitment to it.
Step 2: Open forum for sales and marketing (60 minutes)
The moderator of the Huddle (preferably an outside expert) outlines the structure of the open forum for sales and marketing. The sales and marketing groups are divided in teams of 6 to 8 individuals per team. Sales and marketing personnel are to be on different teams. For each sales or marketing team, a volunteer is assigned who will capture the conversation on a chart or white board. The teams get approximately 45 minutes to discuss the following:
•How they view their role in the company
•What role they expect their counterparts to play in the company
•What they expect the sales-marketing relationship to look like in the company
These open forums are intended to help characterize what an ideal partnership between sales and marketing looks like from the perspective of your sales and marketing personnel. At the end of the 45 minutes session, each group is given 5 minutes to debrief. Debriefing is to take place in separate rooms for sales and marketing. An assigned volunteer will capture what each group has discussed on a white board. This will summarize the views of the sales and marketing teams on what an ideal sales-marketing relationship may look like in your company.
Break: 15 minutes
Step 3: Perspectives sharing (45 minutes)
The sales and marketing groups are brought together again in one large room and the assigned volunteers share the views of the company’s sales and marketing personnel on their notion of the ideal sales-marketing relationship.
At this stage, it is important that neither sales nor marketing personnel are allowed to make any comments or offer any responses or rebuttals to their counterparts’ opinions. Needless to say, both the sales and marketing groups do get the opportunity to ask for clarifications or to clear up any misunderstandings.
At the end of Step 3, the expectations of the sales and marketing groups from each other are out on the table.
Step 4: Reflection and comparison (60 minutes)
At this stage, the findings from Tools 4, 5, and 6 from the C3 toolkit are presented to both groups. These tools are used to assess the level of supportiveness, and trust and openness between sales and marketing, as well as the perceptions of each other’s credibility.
After the results are presented, the moderator asks the sales and marketing groups to go to separate rooms and reflect upon the survey results. The moderator also asks them to compare the results with the summary of the conversation that was the result of Step 3. Participants are asked to make notes during their reflection-comparison exercise.
After bringing everyone back, the moderator asks each group to share their reflections for 15 minutes. The moderator then uses the questions along the lines of those suggested in Table 5.9 in Chapter 5 (in the Designing a Program for Improvement section) to facilitate a conversation among sales, marketing, and the leadership personnel.
At the end of Step 4, both groups will hopefully have a clear understanding of their notions of an ideal sales-marketing relationship, as well a good idea of where that relationship stands right now. They will also begin to gain some initial insights into the possible reasons why they are not able to achieve their ideal relationship.
Lunch break: 90 minutes
Step 5: Synthesis of the findings (90 minutes)
The moderator presents the findings from Tools 1, 2, and 3. These tools assess the respective worldviews of sales and marketing, the strength of their connection, and the communication between them, all of which may help explain many of the problems that the sales and marketing teams are experiencing.
After the findings are presented, the floor is open for a frank, constructive conversation between the sales and marketing teams. The moderator structures the conversation and directs the discussion in order to understand how the sales-marketing interface communications and connections may be improved. The moderator may also show the groups the relationships between the findings from Tools 1 to 3 and 4 to 6; that is, how a suboptimal sales-marketing dynamic captured by 1 to 3 may affect trust, openness, supportiveness and credibility perceptions between the two teams.
Step 5 concludes the formal parts of the first day of the sales-marketing huddle. If you follow our suggested timeline and start your day at 9 AM, the formal activities outlined in Steps 1 through 5 can be completed by 3:30 PM. The rest of the day and evening may be spent on some fun team-based activities (for instance, a basketball game, or any other team-building fun activity) where mixed sales/marketing teams give employees a chance to interact with one another in an informal manner.
While the sales and marketing teams are enjoying their evening, the moderator does a lot of work in the evening hours to synthesize the learnings from Day 1. He couples it with his own assessment, based on objective observations of the interactions between the sales and marketing groups throughout the day. This is a very critical step, since it allows the moderator to gain a deeper understanding of the sales-marketing interface dynamic. Day 2 begins with the moderator sharing some of his reflections with the entire group.
Day 2: Improving your sales-marketing interface
The moderator opens the day by sharing his reflections (based on the work done by him the previous evening). He may organize the reflections in the form of a SWOT analysis that captures the major strengths and weaknesses of the sales-marketing interface and what that means moving forward. He may also weave in his observations during various conversations on Day 2.
Step 6: Interface disconnects (90 minutes)
The moderator presents the findings from Tools 7 and 8 to the entire group. These findings will help the groups see how the interface dynamics affect the company’s strategy processes and the delivery of superior value to customers.
After this presentation, the moderator divides the entire group in teams of 6 to 8 people. This time, the teams must be mixed with both sales and marketing people on the same team. The teams are given approximately 45 minutes to reflect upon the findings from Tools 7 and 8 and identify the areas of disconnect between sales and marketing when it comes to the company’s strategy development and execution processes. Each team is asked to identify the three most important areas of disconnect between sales and marketing.
After the teams have done their work, the entire group is brought together again and each team shares the areas of disconnects they have identified. It is very likely that a few consistent themes will emerge from what multiple teams are reporting. The moderator captures and summarizes the five to six major disconnects identified by the group.
Step 7: Summary (45 minutes)
The moderator then takes the stage and brings it all together for the group. That is, he outlines how the problems during the strategy development and execution processes are a function of the different worldviews of sales and marketing, and their strength of connection and communications, as well as the levels of perceived supportiveness, trust, openness, and credibility. This is followed by a Q&A session to make sure that all participants are on the same page concerning the findings so far.
Step 8: Design of action plan (90 minutes)
The moderator challenges the sales, marketing, and leadership groups to reflect on the past day and a half and to examine the five to six major disconnects identified in Step 6. These are used to identify action items that will help address the major areas of disconnect that were identified earlier. These action items must be geared toward rectifying or strengthening the situation and must satisfy the following criteria:
•They are easily implementable
•They are highly visible and palpable for both the sales and marketing personnel
•They have a direct, positive impact on the interface.
An example of an action item may be specific steps sales and marketing teams may take to improve the communication within the interface (identified as an area of disconnect). As a part of this action item, the teams must specify the various activities they will implement to improve interface communication and keep each other in the loop.
Step 9: Wrap-up (30 minutes)
At this final stage, the leadership concludes the Huddle by reflecting on the key take-aways from the Huddle (including findings, agreements, activities, and responsibilities) and setting the tone for cooperation and collaboration for the sales and marketing teams.
As we noted earlier, the Huddle is the first, and a very important step, that will set your sales and marketing teams on the right path. However, as leaders, your work is not done at the conclusion of the Huddle. You need to remain vigilant in the months to come to ensure that the actions identified by each group are being implemented. It is also your job to make sure that both groups continue to explore new action items in the next few months and implement them.
Next, 9–12 months after concluding the Huddle, you may use the C3 toolkit to assess the new improved state of your sales-marketing interface. A comparison with the old situation helps you to evaluate the success of the implemented action items, identify and prioritize action items for the next 6 months and determine when a new Huddle should be scheduled.