You’ll know the position with your departmental business budgets better than most, but with companies under economic threat and needing to cut costs, history tells us that one of the first to go south is usually the marketing budget.

Sometimes, you, the group leader, notice that there has to be a change to be able to continue moving forward. Things are not working properly, perhaps the group members are moving off-topic, discussing ideas that are not relevant at this phase, or are simply less productive than they could be. You decide that something has to change.

Remember how you were selling five years ago? Consider just how much the process has changed. In the past, dynamics were different between a buyer and seller. Sellers had most of the information about the product or service. They had more power. Buyers had limited data or understanding before interacting with the seller.

There's an old saying, "Many hands make light work." the hope is that this starts a conversation in your business that shared qualification creates revenue, and you now have a basic framework for how to start building your revenue team.

The sales and marketing relationship is so vital, because they are the growth team of your business. And if there is no relationship, you don't have a growth team, you have a growth problem.

The lack of alignment between sales and marketing is failing businesses across the globe. So much so, that misalignment is costing businesses more than a trillion dollars per year. That’s right $1 trillion (with 12 zeros). In fact, sales and marketing misalignment is the number one reason why an organization’s annual revenue stagnates or, worse, declines.