Sales Tips

Sales & Marketing Gap Analysis: What is it?

Have you ever had that feeling that your business activities are not performing to expectations? Does this feeling exist especially in the case of sales and marketing? You might have to perform a sales and marketing gap analysis, if yes.

A well-thought-out sales and marketing gap analysis eliminates all the guesswork that goes into optimizing team performance and allocating resources. It also lays the foundation for a concrete plan to bridge the gap and calibrate business performance.

How does one go about it? We take an in-depth look.

What is Sales and Marketing Gap Analysis?

First things first, what is a sales and marketing gap analysis?

It is a heuristic framework devised to analyze the differences between the current state and the ideal state of sales and marketing activities. Apart from identifying and quantifying this gap, it also involves the creation of a sales and marketing gap plan to bring the two states as close to each other as possible.

As a result, your organization can live up to its potential rather than grappling for solutions and opportunities in the dark.

Why Should Businesses Perform Sales and Marketing Gap Analysis?

Sales and marketing gap analysis can grant you the following advantages:

  • It helps you audit the existing state of the sales and marketing activities – the assets, infrastructure, resources, teams, and processes involved.
  • It documents the desired future state of the sales and marketing activities, which can serve as an organizational goal.
  • Knowing the current and the future state allows leaders to prepare strategies to bridge the two and benefit the organization as a whole.
  • It can also be used to prioritize sales and marketing tasks based on the urgency and impact of the issue that come to light during sales gap analysis.
  • It optimizes resource allocation, especially for crucial specifics such as those involving budget and human effort.

In short, sales and marketing gap analysis will streamline all sales and marketing activities to make them more meaningful and profitable for a business.

Sales and Marketing Gap Analysis: A 4-Step Strategy

Sales and marketing gap analysis can aid decisions for trimming or expanding your business capabilities. Here is an easy 4-step guide to take it to the next level:

Analyze Your Current State

Start by taking stock of the current state of your sales and marketing teams. Involve team members across the hierarchy to understand their pain points. Is the marketing team failing to generate high-quality leads and pass them on to sales? Are the sales reps finding it hard to get past the gatekeepers? Identify the key problems that are shackling your business down to its current state.

Don’t be afraid to get down and dirty with data and dig for the metrics and KPIs over the past few years. If it comes to it, you can even involve your customers through surveys to quantify your current state. Convert this information into easy-to-digest visual formats such as graphs and charts so that even those not directly involved in sales and marketing can get the complete picture.

Document the Ideal Future State

Once you have figured out the present, it is time to envision the future – at least what it should look like. We highly recommend that you follow the SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound) approach while formalizing the future state.

While it is pragmatic to stay within the realms of reality, we also encourage you to think and dream big. Sure, it would not amount to an overnight change; however,  a long-term goal would be far better than a temporary band-aid situation. You can always break down an ambitious ideal state into phase-wise states, so don’t hold back either.

Identify the Sales and Marketing Gap

By this point, you have the current state and the ideal state. It is now time to put them side by side and identify the missing pieces. There are several sales and marketing gap analysis tools that can help you visualize the existing gaps and how you can proceed with bridging them. Here is a list of some of the popular techniques:

  • SWOT analysis – to determine internal and external threats and opportunities, as well as measure up against the competition.
  • Fishbone diagram – to investigate the possible causes and effects of a root problem.
  • McKinsey’s 7S framework – to determine whether the performance is up to expectations as documented in the centralized shared vision.
  • Nadler-Tushman model – to examine the impact of one business process on the other. It is particularly useful in this context as sales and marketing are closely related.
  • PEST analysis – to examine external factors, namely Political, Economic, Sociological, and Technological to minimize market risks. It can be expanded to PESTLE (PEST + Legal and Environmental).

Draft a Sales and Marketing Gap Plan

Now that you have identified the sales and marketing gap, and even prepared a high-level roadmap for bridging the current and ideal states, it is time to convince all the stakeholders and business leaders to adopt the same.

Once again, you can make your case stronger by presenting your strategy through SMART objectives. These mini-goals will validate that all business obstacles are surmountable with the right strategy and within a reasonable duration. You may even seek inputs from the managers and team members to make the sales and marketing gap reduction plan more value-loaded, meaningful, and actionable from the grassroots level.

When you get everyone on board, it is all about implementation!

Closing Thoughts

Sales and marketing gap analysis can lend insight into the shortcomings of your sales and marketing processes. It can also help you harness the unrealized potential that you may be missing out on due to missed opportunities.

In addition to aligning sales and marketing performance with their respective aspirational goals, it can bring about harmony between the often-sparring teams and get them on the same plane. The resulting cohesiveness and movement in the same direction would naturally improve your company’s bottom line and help you far exceed the goals set thus!

Sid heads the global Sales Team at JustCall. He has been instrumental in establishing the foundation for the GTM functions at JustCall, driving the organisation into a growth phase. He is passionate about enabling organisations to build great customer experiences using technology. He is always looking to help startups beyond work, advising early stage companies on all things Sales & GTM.

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