Last year, I was managing the Bluewolf blog when ‘just a guy from Missouri,’ Jason English, wrote the blog “Why I Work at Bluewolf.” It not only pulled over 1000 visitors to our website, it pulled at our heartstrings. If you read that ironically, I advise you to read Jason’s blog instead!

I spent 24 hours this week in our beautiful new Denver office with 20+ salesforce.com reps and Jason English. Coincidentally, we jumped on the same plane back to San Francisco. I was thrilled, in part because my current #1 business obsession is around sales and marketing alignment. I’m in Marketing, and I had the head of Sales for the Wild Wild West to pester with questions for the entire trip.

As we drove to the airport amid intermittent strikes of lightning I asked, “Hey Jason, what future campaigns could I run that would support the most current needs of our sales team in the field?” 

Jason stressed the importance of differentiating ourselves in the marketplace. It’s about, for example, picking a product or vertical and demonstrating particular expertise in the area. Campaigns can follow the same line of thought. Marketing can collaborate even more with sales to get lessons from the field—e.g. what are clients’ concerns and how are we speaking to our customers’ customer? Sales can get more involved early on in campaign ideation so that they feel a sense of ownership, and are more aware (therefore more likely to use) the specific thought leadership during sales cycles.

I reflected on the meeting we had had with salesforce.com earlier that day. I knew exactly what had differentiated Bluewolf in their eyes:

1. The Bluewolf culture—with an average tenure of four years, the entrepreneurial, bold Bluewolf team can’t be beat! Sure, we have the ‘number’ of Salesforce certifications that any partner would be envious of, but as one rep remarked, “having a cert, does not mean they can make a project a success.”
2. Our Salesforce Service Cloud and Salesforce Marketing Cloud practice—and how we’re bringing it all together. No other global consulting partner has the expertise we have in social business and social customer service. And I know why Bluewolf is leading the way: it’s because from the moment we start here, we’re given the freedom to innovate and we’re told to ‘think big.’ As Jason wrote in his blog, “I work at Bluewolf because we’re not afraid to be provocative.”
3. We ensure the long-term success of our projects. Whether it’s our dedicated practice to change management and adoption, our cloud governance practice (which makes managing complicated release schedules a piece of cake), or our Bluewolf Beyond post go-live managed services, we keep customers happy. In fact, we guarantee their success.

While waiting for the plane to board I asked, “Hey Jason, how do you do sales forecasting, and how accurate is it really?”

“I’ll show you.” Jason pulled out his iPad and in 0.5 seconds had his full dashboard up. I could see what was in the pipeline by ‘best case’ scenario, which deals were closing real time, how each rep was performing (go Jackie!). There were gauges showing how much progress had been made towards annual goals, and more. 

Wow. The power of Salesforce. Wow. What transparency at Bluewolf—do most companies operate in this way? And wow. The desktop really is dead, it’s all about getting your sales team mobile.

Lastly, sharing a taxi into the city I asked, “Hey Jason, how do we get Sales to help us demonstrate Marketing ROI?”

“Let’s start getting even more collaboration between the teams.” Ask reps if they want to get involved early. The reps who have dealt with a specific issue—one that marketing wants to address—will get engaged early, and end up getting more informed themselves. The conversation helped me quickly sketch out small wins that could be accomplished quickly—e.g. 10 minute calls monthly with Sales to share our email marketing strategy, quick two-three minute trainings on the value of attaching campaigns to opportunities, etc.

I have a ways to go in my own self-education around building Sales and Marketing alignment. Luckily, I work in an open, collaborative, environment surrounded by a bunch of experts who are always happy to help and to share their knowledge. That’s why I work at Bluewolf.