We’re always hearing that marketing and sales should be better aligned (whatever that means), but I see little practical advice about how to do that beyond the usual change management stuff. I don’t discount the importance of change management, but sometimes you need something more concrete—something that marketing and sales can do together that gets them working closer together without people noticing it so much.

Our research shows that we may have found something: account planning.

For a company’s most important (i.e., biggest) accounts, good account planning is essential. But sales is under all kinds of pressure these days and we’re finding that many salespeople simply don’t have the time—or the inclination—to do real in-depth research on their accounts. Sure, salespeople know the accounts—they know what the customers have spent and what they are most likely to want next. They may also know what the customers’ major business issues are—if they know how to ask.

But there’s more that can be done. Our research shows that customers don’t think their providers do a very good job of helping them with their business issues.

Marketers could help with that problem. Research is one of marketing’s greatest strength. And in big, important customers, it’s worth integrating that ability into the account planning process. We’re calling it Collaborative Account Planning.

Everyone has something to gain from collaboration in account planning. Salespeople have the opportunity to move customers through the buying process faster—and become a part of the planning process for those purchases. Marketers have the chance to eliminate much of the distance between the work they do and the outcome they desire—a clear, direct impact on the sales process. And customers have an opportunity to get help and ideas on the issues that are most pressing to them.

Obviously, not every account can receive the kind of effort we’re talking about here—where marketing does a “deep dive” into an account through primary and secondary research , interviewing customers, determining the company’s strategic goals and the competitive issues it faces within the vertical. But the research investment has a useful life beyond one specific account. Marketing can reuse the information it discovers about a strategic account with other customers in that vertical.

Eventually, marketing becomes the institutional memory for account planning, helping salespeople create shortcuts by identifying what has worked in the past and what has not, what resources may be appropriate, and what company assets exist that can help.

And the research equips marketers to use their creative abilities to do something else: help salespeople refine the value propositions for specific customers.  One of my colleagues  did this when she worked for marketing in a consulting firm. Marketing assigned her to work with sales to try to win the business of a major toy retailer. Marketers researched the company and its markets, talked with the sales account team, and interviewed several store employees and customers. Using that information, the marketers worked with the sales team to develop an account plan.

When it came time to present to the customer, salespeople used the toy retailer’s terminology, and marketers designed the proposal cover and contents to look like one of the company’s stores. When the company won the business, the toy retailer highlighted the extra effort the company made to get to know them. For marketing, it was dream—clear evidence that the work it was doing and the materials it was producing had a direct impact on the sale.

Why aren’t more companies working like this? Are you?