The Importance of Pipeline Visibility for OEMs
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Alignment and Why You Need It
Marketing should drive value for your company. If it isn't creating an impact in the business, feels disconnected from strategy, or your leadership team doesn't understand how it's supposed to drive growth, alignment is the answer.
What is Alignment? Allow John to Explain.
In order for marketing to drive value for your company, your marketing strategy has to directly connect to your business strategy. That’s alignment – a crystal clear picture of how marketing should serve your business, and a commitment to making it happen that’s shared by all.
“Working with Element Three helped us coalesce our language and establish a shared vocabulary around marketing. From our perspective as a growing company, it was incredibly important for us to do this.”
Dan Gable
Leadership
JG2 Companies
“As with our brand work, the result of what Element Three puts together is always great. They do fantastic work, and it starts with the fact that their processes include great questions and lots of listening. They simply get us.”
Tim Leman
Leadership
Gibson
“Element Three helped us craft compelling stories to convey our company’s value proposition, and created cohesive go-to-market strategies. They didn’t just tell us what we could do, they helped execute to drive business results. The growth they helped us create helped to drive a significant exit multiple in our recent sale.”
John Ackerman
Leadership
Cardinal Equity Partners
“Working with Element Three helped us coalesce our language and establish a shared vocabulary around marketing. From our perspective as a growing company, it was incredibly important for us to do this.”
Dan Gable
Leadership
JG2 Companies
“As with our brand work, the result of what Element Three puts together is always great. They do fantastic work, and it starts with the fact that their processes include great questions and lots of listening. They simply get us.”
Tim Leman
Leadership
Gibson
“Element Three helped us craft compelling stories to convey our company’s value proposition, and created cohesive go-to-market strategies. They didn’t just tell us what we could do, they helped execute to drive business results. The growth they helped us create helped to drive a significant exit multiple in our recent sale.”
John Ackerman
Leadership
Cardinal Equity Partners
About Alignment
About Alignment
When you need Alignment When your organization has been “doing marketing” but you’re unable to tie that activity to business impact, or when you don’t have a clear understanding of how marketing can impact your pipeline. Why we’re the ones to help As a marketing partner to businesses just like yours, we know just how painful it can be when alignment isn’t there. But that also means we’ve seen it from the inside of a myriad of clients in dramatically different businesses – from pharmaceuticals to manufacturers with complex dealer networks – and can put everything we’ve learned to work for you. Together, we’ll evaluate your biggest pain points, unlock your version of alignment, and show you how to maintain it long-term. What results look like In addition to a level of clarity and shared commitment you’ve been craving in your business, you’ll walk away with a documented go-to-market strategy designed for you, metrics you should be monitoring, and marketing projects you should focus on in order to win against the competition.
ADDITIONAL INFO
FAQs and Need-to-Knows
We generally recommend starting with an Alignment Workshop. In the workshop, we’ll bring together your executive leadership, owners of marketing and sales, and any other key stakeholders. Using a proven format, we’ll discuss (in detail) your revenue streams, customer segments, go-to-market motions, and more. Laying it all on the table from all the various perspectives of your team can be life- and business-changing.
Alignment Workshops are run in either a consecutive two-day offsite or several sessions over two to three weeks, depending on scheduling and availability of your team. In either case, the workshop is preceded by one-on-one interactions with your sales and marketing leaders and executive sponsor (usually the CEO) to prepare. Following the workshop, the Element Three team will document the decisions and exercises and draft a set of recommendations and next steps, delivered in a presentation to the leadership team.
Alignment is both an empirical and an anecdotal measurement. You’ll be able to see it in your objectives and how you’re tracking toward them, and you’ll be able to feel it in the ease and speed at which you can make business decisions.
We recommend planning for the next 6-18 months. Six months is far enough out that you can achieve some tangible impact. 18 months is long enough to build long-term traction.
Include leadership team members with responsibility for revenue, as well as sales and marketing leaders, and at least one person to represent your product/service.
Quarterly. Functional leaders (directors, CMOs) are best suited to make sure alignment is maintained over the course of each quarter, and then the leadership team should revisit your alignment on an annual basis — or sooner if your market, audience, or offering changes.
Whenever possible, we prefer to have the workshop sessions in person with your team — this can take place at our offices or yours, depending on geography. However, we can conduct alignment workshop sessions virtually if necessary.
Are you ready to unlock alignment?
If your team would benefit from a clearer understanding of how marketing should drive growth and forward progress for the business, let’s not wait another day. Reach out to talk about what alignment can do for you, and set up your Alignment Workshop.
Expertise should be shared.
What good is learning something if you don't pass it on? You can tap into what we know right now, and you don't have to give us a thing.
