For many years there has been an understandable focus placed on the alignment between sales and marketing. And, as that conversation continues, a report [pdf] from The CMO Survey indicates that alignment between marketing and finance might be in greater need of improvement.
Whether it be poor communication or being siloed, there have been many challenges throughout the years when it comes to aligning sales and marketing. Nonetheless, there appears to be some progress. This recent report finds that many of the top marketers surveyed rate alignment with their counterparts in sales fairly highly. More than half rated the alignment between marketing and sales leaders within their company on goals, strategies and tools/data either a 6 (32.1%) or 7 (22.1%) on a scale of 1 to 7 (1=not at all, 7=very high), with the mean standing at 5.3.
An earlier Gartner survey found that finance was considered the top inhibitor to marketing. So, perhaps it’s not a big surprise that when marketing leaders were asked to rate their alignment with finance leaders on the same scale, the mean rating was slightly lower (5.0) than that of marketing and sales leaders. Additionally, considerably fewer respondents rated the alignment between these two departments a 6 (25.4%) or 7 (18.8%).
There are some industries where alignment between marketing and finance leaders is higher than the average. Those in the Retail/Wholesale (5.6), Tech (5.3) and Professional Services/Consulting (5.2) industries are considered most aligned. On the other end of the scale, marketing and finance leaders in the Mining/Construction industry were the least aligned, with a mean rating of 2.8.
Alignment with finance also appears to be better for companies where more than 10% of sales come from the internet (5.4) than those with 0% of sales from the internet (4.8).
The full report can be found here.
About the Data: Results are based on a survey of 356 top marketers (94.5% are VP-level and above) at US for-profit companies.
