Okay, so maybe you’ve actually met your CFO. Unless you are a close confidante, however, you may not know what keeps him, or her, awake at night. Or what a great position you are in to help alleviate concern, contribute to business strategy and more closely align marketing with the C-suite.

How might you accomplish all that? There are some important clues in a report by David Rosenbaum in the July/August issue of CFO magazine. The article describes the importance CFOs place on sales pipeline data as a basis for revenue forecasting and reporting. While the CRM systems that enable a sales pipeline are becoming more sophisticated, cheaper and simpler to deploy, they still leave a significant insight gap for financial folks and that’s a source of concern.

The executives and experts interviewed in the CFO article mention the need to assess capacity (for more purchases) in their existing customer base as well as marketing efficiency and marketing-sales alignment. They are also seeking a view of business opportunities “not reflected in the pipeline.” As Jonathan L. S. Byrnes, MIT senior lecturer and author of Islands of Profit in a Sea of Red Ink, puts it:

"The sales pipeline is a tracking system for what's there. But we don't know who salespeople are not bothering to sell to. Are they leaving scraps on the table, or big hunks of steak?"

Beginning to sound like the purview of marketing? Yeah, I think so, too. And I think we need to embrace the opportunity and engage in this conversation with our colleagues in both finance and sales.  Here are just some of the ways we as B2B marketers can help advise, guide and provide insight:

1. Expand the concept of the sales pipeline to the rest of the buying process and help our colleagues see the role of marketing in attracting and interacting with prospects long before they become active sales leads.
2. Recognize the buyers in that process are changing all the time, and that you’ll need up to date research covering existing customers and targeted prospects.
3. Remember front-line employees – sales, customer service, and logistics – can provide key insights to help shape your research.
4. Social media monitoring is a great way to find out what your customers and prospects are saying about you, your competitors, your market segment … and can also help shape depth interviews and other research tools.
5. Create buyer personas informed by your research and align marketing and sales activity accordingly.
6. Determine the metrics important to your sales and finance colleagues and be sure to apply the right tools to capture, analyze and report on those metrics; assess and adjust as often as necessary.

If CFOs are worried or at least wondering about what they can’t see in the sales pipeline, marketing teams and their agency partners are in an excellent position to help improve their vision. And we can build better relationships with sales and harder-working marketing programs in the process.