Today’s post comes from Doug Davidoff, the founder and CEO of our joint venture partner, Imagine Business Development.

I’ve spent the last twenty years obsessed with what happens when a prospective buyer and seller meet.  I’ve studied what works, what doesn’t and why. I’ve born firsthand witness to a literal transformation in how things work.

The one constant I’ve seen over the entire time is the disconnect between sales and marketing.  Through this time, marketing viewed their job as ending too early and sales viewed their own job as starting too late.

Twenty years ago, this disconnect caused some frustration and friction, but it didn’t prevent an organization from being successful. Over that time, the balance of power (for lack of a better phrase) has completely shifted from one controlled by the seller to one controlled by the customer.  In a customer controlled world, misalignment is a cause for accelerating sales costs, evaporating margins and even failure.

Last week we shared insights into one of the major shifts – the Zero Moment of Truth (ZMOT).  In the old days, when a customer had a question, problem or need, they had no choice but to engage with a salesperson to learn, and ultimately, buy.

Today that same customer who used to reach out to your salesperson now goes online.  Research from the likes of the Sales Executive Council and Forrester Research indicates by the time a customer is ready to talk to your salespeople, they’re 65 – 90% through their decision process.

I remember in some of my early sales training, I was taught the importance of body language and how to interpret it. The problem today is that these traditional approaches to assessing a prospect’s interest and approach simply don’t work.

Bottom line – growing revenue is a new game today. Your next customer will research and evaluate your offering long before your sales team can get involved or you can get a “read” on them.  For many marketers and sales teams this change is devastating.  They’ve lost all of their power to influence and command the process and are now left to the whims (and price shopping) of their prospects.

However, as with every great challenge, this very obstacle creates tremendous opportunities.  Now more than ever, organizations can align their sales and marketing process and bridge the gap. 

Marketers today can gain more insights and understanding to what their prospects are thinking and how they are going to act. Further, they can customize their message, content and other deliverables to the unique profile of the prospect. What’s more is that information can seamlessly be transferred to your sales team, allowing them to customize their approach to maximize your opportunity for success.

How can this be done?

By decoding what I like to call a prospect’s “digital body language.”  Every time someone does something on the web, they leave a fingerprint.  Each action creates a profile that can be decoded and used to customize the content you create and feature.

As prospects spend more time online, you can decode who they are, what is motivating them, and even where they might be in their decision process.  Armed with this knowledge, you become more compelling and gain the opportunity to enter the sales cycle and influence the prospect before anyone else even knows they’re out there.

Implementing this approach is not difficult, but it does take a strategy and approach to execution that is relatively new. This game is not played by the old rules.  This past May, I shared these insights at the Apartment Internet Marketing (AIM) Conference in Newport Beach, CA.