Today we kicked the radio portion of the AMA's Marketing and Sales Alignment Forum. So we took on the prennial discussion of marketing and sales – a topic that just seems to get hotter and hotter. The Marketing and Sales Alignment Forum is a consortium of companies, in partnership with the AMA that are focused on bridging the gap between marketing and sales to create greater overall corporate effectiveness.

In today’s show, I was joined Dave Fitzgerald, executive vice president of marketing, sales and services for Brainshark, one of the sponsors of the marketing & sales alignment forum…and a recognized thought leader on the issue. Brainshark creates online tools for communicating in rich media your marketing and sales messages.

In the era of YouTube, Tivo and on demand videos, it's no surprise that people are consuming rich media every day at significant rates -- but in a manner that fits their schedules and time constraints. One key suggestion of today's show is that we need to move some of our communications to prospects or customers into this medium, allowing them to view it when they want. The key benefit to you as a marketer -- message retention and message alignment.

First, 65% of messages delivered in a rich media format (audio and visual) are retained a week after delivery, compared to only 10% of messages delivered orally, and 20% of messages delivered in a format people can read.

Second, when you package your messages into a rich media format that sales people can send out as needed, there is no interpretation of that content, it stands on its own and the consistentcy of the information allows you to do a better job of testing and measuring message effectiveness.

I know I am preaching to the choir here, but what astounds me is how little we as marketers are actually doing to make a significant impact in this area. It just can't be that marketing and sales will never get along, that we're so different from one another. We must find a way to permanently bridge the gap between what we want to say, and what customers want to hear -- and just give it to them. Territory battles of who is right have no place in 21st century consumer communications.