The Walt Disney Company has a small ride at a small theme park you may have heard of. The general gist of the ride is that the world is a lot smaller than you think and thus you should conduct yourself in a manner so as to create a better tomorrow for all of Earth’s inhabitants. Pretty good theme! Slap an incessantly catchy tune onto the ride and you’ve got yourself one heck of a rocking good time.
The ride was opened for the first time in the 1960s. If they thought the world was small back then, well Walt Disney’s cryogenically frozen head is in for a real shocker when someone hits the defrost button. Technology has shrunk the world an incredible amount in the 50 years since “It’s a Small World” opened. Enterprise organizations operate on multiple continents with relative ease. Coworkers half a world away easily collaborate on projects. Globalization, however, poses its own challenges that every organization needs to navigate.
Perhaps no industry must be more aware of the challenges of globalization than the healthcare industry. Because global healthcare organizations strive for standardization, they are rightly concerned about scalability and alignment across their spread out teams. In fact, 49% of healthcare leaders say they want stronger alignment between Sales and Marketing in 2018. And why wouldn’t they? Anybody who’s anybody wants better alignment!
MarketingProfs has found that tight alignment between Sales and Marketing results in 38% higher win rates.
Pitfalls of Misalignment
Sure that’s what happens when you align correctly, but what are the pitfalls of misalignment in the healthcare industry, you ask? I hear you, you don’t have to shout about it so much, we’re getting there. Just keep scanning your eyeballs further ahead. In the healthcare industry, misalignment manifests itself in three serious ways:
- Non-Compliance: Marketing needs to ensure all content is compliant and meets all regulatory standards, but Sales needs quick access to content and has to customize presentations for personalized outreach. These two needs will become at odds with one another and result in noncompliant materials.
- Inefficiency: Almost by definition, a misaligned team is an inefficient team. When Marketing and Sales aren’t working in close lockstep then processes break down and everything takes a whole lot longer than it should.
- Siloes: Global teams can quickly become siloed because they spend their days with a certain group of teammates. True alignment happens when everyone is on the same page and working together closely.
How to Properly Align
Alright, now you’re well versed in the problems with misalignment for global organizations. Now how do we solve that pesky misalignment issue? There are a handful of ways to create a better environment of alignment in your organization, and I am here to give them to you like manna from on high.
- Sales Communication: A global workforce needs to communicate effectively if they’re ever going to be truly aligned. Sales and Marketing need a centralized way to effectively learn about new content, product updates, competitor info, and industry updates.
- Content Analytics: How will Marketing know what types of content to create if they don’t know what’s effective? Marketing needs access to robust content analytics to know how Sales deploys content and what works.
- Customized Content: Back to the problem of Sales needing personalized content for their interactions with buyers. Marketing needs a tool that gives Sales freedom to personalize when they need to but also locks down certain aspects of the content so things can’t be edited that would result in content falling out of compliance.
Ok, so now you know what misalignment for global healthcare organizations is bad, what happens when you do achieve alignment (hint: better value-based care, and more sales), and a few tips for achieving alignment.
But if you think that’s all you need to know about aligning your global healthcare organization then you’re wrong. Dead wrong! Luckily for you we have an entire guide dedicated to the subject. Just go ahead and click that beautiful image below, fill out some basic info, and it’s all yours for free! That’s right, totally free. You think you’re getting a better deal than that today? You’re not! So go on, amscray, and get to reading that guide.
