How to Juggle Your Business to Success

culled from:steverrobbins.com

The day-to-day operations of any organization can be a bit like juggling – the right hand needs to know what the left is doing, and the body in the middle has to coordinate the entire process. While it may be possible to keep everything in motion, without proper synchronicity things can only stay that way for a short amount of time before balls start to drop. In companies, marketing and finance often play the role of the two hands.

Earlier this year, Active International conducted a survey of CFOs and CMOs of U.S.-based companies to evaluate their working relationship. As you might expect, both sides appreciate the value in alignment – 77 % of CMOs and 76% of CFOs believe it is at least highly important to have alignment with their counterpart. But, there is also the impression that a lack of alignment doesn’t have a significant effect on the company – only 45% of each say misalignment has a moderate or higher negative impact on a company’s success and growth.

    Companies where marketing and finance work closely together more than 40 percent outperformed expectations.

We know that this is not true. Research from a Marketing 2020 survey found that in companies where marketing and finance work closely together more than 40 percent outperformed expectations. Even when misalignment doesn’t directly hurt the bottom line, if the CMO and CFO are out of sync for the long-term, businesses can feel the impact.  Employee performance can be diminished, relationships between teams become misaligned, and overall company culture can take a hit. This morale change can cause sales to lose its competitive edge, create difficulties in attracting talent, and potential business partners may be less interested in doing business with the company.

The question then remains – how do company leaders bring disparate departments into alignment, particularly the finance and marketing arms of an organization? These two groups, perhaps more than any other, have historically been working on different ends of the balance sheet – the CMO’s office has traditionally been tasked with handling and promoting the company’s high-level brand awareness, whereas the CFO jurisdiction has been ensuring bottom-line results. The rise of digital programs over the last decade or so has given the CMO better tools to “talk-the-talk” when it comes to ROI, but there’s still work to be done to overcome the gap.

    Even when misalignment doesn’t directly hurt the bottom line, if the CMO and CFO are out of sync for the long-term, businesses can feel the impact.

A first step in this process is for these teams to more regularly share information with each other.  While it might seem that the only common ground between these departments is in the dollars and cents, a clear understanding of the goals and potential payoffs of marketing initiatives – particularly long term ones – as well as a comprehension of the financial challenges and opportunities of the business, can go a long way to building bridges and producing better results.

Further, both sides need to remember that business success is both a sprint and a marathon. The CFO is required to report on finances on a quarterly basis, but a particular marketing program may see the full benefits of their endeavors  for many quarters or even years.  Working together to find metrics that can show successes both in the near term and in the long haul is critical to success for both the CMO and CFO.
“Business success is both a sprint and a marathon.” @ActiveIntl

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Last, but certainly not least, it’s important to speak the same language – there are some concepts that are important company-wide, such as customer, shareholder value, marketshare, and the like. These are valuable concepts to both departments and can be the cornerstones of growth for the newfound partnership.

The Active International full report, CMOs & CFOs: Collision or Collaboration, is available for download here and further dives into the research findings.