Marketing = sales support.
Sales support = shortening the sales cycle.
Shortened sales cycles = sales and marketing alignment.

You know what the real barrier to all of this working smoothly is? It’s not what you might think. What we’ve come to find is that internal communications (or miscommunications) tend to be the real hang up when it comes to conveying the external message out to the market. In a world inundated with iPhones and BlackBerrys and millions of social networking mediums, communication has become easy, instantaneous, constant… but also overwhelming. It seems our modern world of communication provides many forums but lacks EFFECTIVENESS.

With the onslaught of information at our fingertips and ever decreasing attention spans (made even shorter by Twitter) we’ve found it’s hard to get/keep someone’s attention long enough to read and absorb a simple email. We’re not the first to say it but it is true. Ease of communication has led to over-communication which backfired resulting in an inability to communicate clearly and directly with colleagues and clients. This, obviously, makes it difficult to keeping moving the ball forward.

But we’re communications experts and we’ve adapted to ensure our message is conveyed precisely. We’ve employed, and recommend you do the same, new tactics when it comes to our internal communications. Our approach is one where less is more. And when all else fails go face-to-face. If I can’t convey what I need to in three sentences or less, I make the call instead. I put the action item in the subject line. I use bold text or yellow highlighter to call-out the “need to knows” knowing that my reader will skim the contents of my emails. No doubt we all enjoy and rely upon innovative means of communicating—but you must use these advancements methods thoughtfully or your message is sure to be lost in the virtual abyss.