Who has control over when a sale is complete? Is it the salesperson? The marketing team? The client? Every situation is unique. But for a strategy to be consistently successful, a company’s sales and marketing teams need to be operating with shared goals—which is easier said than done, says my latest guest and longtime friend, Matt Heinz, president of Heinz Marketing.

When he’s not spending time with his wife, children, cats and six chickens, Matt is the head of the Seattle-based agency that prides itself on delivering results—more customers, higher revenue, lower costs.

Here is the entirety of our discussion, and below are some highlights. (Due to technical difficulties only Matt's video will display during this interview.)

The Quality of Leads is Abysmal

Click to start at this point—Matt said the biggest problem is that marketers are not taking responsibility for what happens after leads are generated. I agree. The quality of leads being generated nowadays is abysmal. In a recent study, it was determined that of 9,000 leads, only 1.28 percent were quality. Marketers and sales people need to be working towards the same goals.

Aligning Sales and Marketing

Click to start at this point—When you talk about alignment between marketing and sales, how do you reach that state and how do you get companies to stick with it? Matt told me that consistent objectives are really important. You have to have sales and marketing leaders that actually believe in this—that aren’t just giving it lip service. He said you have to have leadership above them who believe in it and are driving it.

Original Content Attracts Twitter Followers

Click to start at this point—Matt’s company has more than 18,000 Twitter followers. (That number has grown to over 19,000 since our interview two weeks ago.) So what are they doing to generate leads? Most people don’t want to hear this, but Matt and his team work at it every day. They have more than 1,600 original blog posts on their site—a new post seven days a week—and this content drives traffic from Google and from social media.

Target the Bigger Companies

Click to start at this point—I know which companies visit my website, and I wondered how closely Matt followed his site’s traffic. Not surprisingly, he said he follows it very closely. By looking at their incoming traffic reports, Matt and his team know which big companies are visiting their site and downloading their content. Consequently they’ve been spending more time writing about topics that they think will appeal to larger organizations. It’s about knowing your audience and adapting to their needs.

You can connect with Matt and learn more about Heinz Marketing via the following resources:

Website: www.heinzmarketing.com

Email: matt at heinzmarketing dot com

Twitter: @mattheinz

The next PowerViews will be with Dave Stein of ES Research Group. Stay Tuned.

By Dan McDade