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I’m presenting a workshop this week titled - How to get sales and marketing on the same page.
The point of the discussion is to help the audience, made up of marketers and the sales people for those marketers, understand that while they may indeed perform unique and necessary functions, they have shared objectives.
So, while, as the title of this post suggests, the gap between what sales does and what marketing does in support may seem vast (and perhaps even at odds) there is an absolute need to strike a balance between their independent and interdependent selves.
What you are reading is one part of a two part post - the other, by the way, is titled - Those idiots in marketing just don’t get it. In case you want in on the joke, the body of both posts is the same, only the names have been changed to expose the guilty. So, that’s the real point - to be more effective sales teams should learn how to be more about ideas and relevant conversations (more like marketing), to be more effective marketing should learn how to build better relationships (more like sales).
To further illustrate my point I’d like to offer my definition of marketing: marketing is - getting someone who has a need to know, like and trust you. Now let’s blend in my definition of sales: sales is - taking know, like and trust and converting it to try, buy, repeat and refer.
See, for now marketing owns the conversation, the idea, and sales owns the relationship. Wouldn’t sales and marketing life be grand if organizations learned how to use relevant conversations to build better customer relationships instead of metrics and quotas destined to keep their teams off the same page.
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This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 25th, 2008 at Mar 25, 08 | 2:13 pm and is filed under Lead Conversion, Lead Generation, Marketing Strategy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
[…] Those idiots in sales just don’t get it […]
John,
I have experienced your funny spin on the running battle between Sales and Marketing in both big and small organizations. After years of puzzling over the dilemma, I have finally concluded that the right answer is to fire all the marketers. While my solution might seem a little draconian, it gets to the heart of the matter - Marketing Strategy is not a department or function. Marketing Strategy is a core function of the senior management that can’t be delegated to some Department outside of executive office. That is true regardless of whether senior management is a Fortune 500 CEO or a sole proprietor operating a small business. If the sales department needs support services, create a little department to do that work. DO NOT, under any circumstances, call it the Marketing Department!
Problem solved.
Mike - Your point about strategy is dead on, but strategy is hard work and that’s why senior management likes to delegate it.
John, first of all let me say I learn so much from your blog. Thank you. Second, I think part of the problem of getting marketing and sales on the same page is that they are measured by different values. Marketing is measured on “activity” and sales is measured on “opportunity”. You can’t blame them for trying to achieve the goals they have been set. So to fix the problem the person that sets their goals has to understand what he/she is trying to accomplish at the highest level and then use the language and metrics that gets everyone on the same page. Just MHO.
Trish - you are so right, the problem is not so much with sales and/or marketing, it’s a cultural thing for most organizations.
As one of those idiots in sales, I must protest! Marketing truly does not know how to give sales what they most desperately needs.
That’s why I wrote an ebook called What Sales Really Needs From Marketing. If you’re interested, you can download it on my blog: http://tinyurl.com/2dmmqa
Jill,
You walked right into that one - me thinks you doth protest too much - please read - Those idiots in marketing just don’t get it.
The guilt if that’s what we want to call it is organizational and not individual. When sales and marketing are on the same page - things work much better.
John:
This is a fascinating topic, and the answer is not simple. It really doesn’t matter who performs the marketing function: a marketing department or senior management, as long as everybody buys into the strategy (of course it helps when senior management has a marketing background as opposed to being made of, for example, bean counters).
However, under no circumstances should sales people dictate marketing strategy. Good marketing and branding strategy involves saying NO, a lot. No to new products that don’t make sense, no to SKU proliferation, no to the wrong kind of customer, no to a short term sale that may jeopardize a long term relationship with a key customer, etc.
I’m not saying that sales people can’t grasp these concepts, just that the way they are compensated automatically puts them in the wrong frame of mind to make sound strategic decisions.
John, are you saying that marketing is just about promoting the product you have by getting people to trust you to buy the product?
Well, I always figured that depending on the business, marketing generated the leads, and sales generated the orders. Of course, I’m in direct marketing, so I can have both!
Hi John,
I think it would be an interesting experiment if you asked all of your readers to define marketing. I find that the plethora of definitions out there hints that maybe we don’t really know what marketing is (or more accurately, what marketing has become). How do you see social media fitting in to the overall marketing strategy?
Jacob
Jacob’s “define marketing” question is key. Definitions range from “Little Marketing” to “Big Marketing.” Little Marketing is the task list of to do items associated with Sales (advertising, sales collateral,and a long list of other sales support functions.) Big Marketing is an integral part of business strategy that can’t be separated from the Executive Office. While I don’t know John’s view, his Duct Tape Marketing book advocates a Big Marketing definition - any company that follows his approach will perform a strategic audit of the entire company as part of the Marketing plan design. I think that is what he means when he says that every business is a marketing business.
You should change the title of your workshop to “How to get Sales and Marketing on the same WEBpage”. Marketing has done a terrific job of exploiting the simplicity of information dispersal via the web by supplying sales rich content.
I remember the good old days…mailing brochures; now we just tell the customer to “get it from the web”.
I remember face to face presentations; now replaced by webinars (and/or whitepapers).
I remember having to provide customer references; now replaced by case studies.
What is left for the 2 month sales veteran to disburse?
I find this dialog fascinating! I ran marketing for a Fortune 500 company for many years, and certainly lived through a number of struggles with Sales.
The line between these two rivals continues to blur. In my opinion, this is driven by the increasing domination of the Web over how customers interact with a brand. As Semantic Marketing technologies emerge, websites are now simultaneously performing both marketing and sales functions.
Our technology, Semanticator, allows brands to welcome key market segments immediately upon arrival. So, just like a good sales person, websites enabled with our technology can listen before making suggestions. And, like a good marketer, they can position properly based not only on the market segment, but in light of the competition in the visitor’s selection set, the visitor’s gender, location, search keywords, etc.
So, we’re going to have to create Sales-Oriented Marketing people or Marketing-Oriented Sales people. Take your pick!
I have found that, so often, sales people intent on accomplishing sales goals end up working against themselves. If you have decided to be a professional sales person and not a part-time short term seller of goods and services, you need to develop relationships. Your first sales objective is to sell yourself. Think for a moment about your own decisions to purchase goods and services. To what extent do feelings of trust, comfort, and positive personal feelings effect your decision?
When representing a financial services organization, I had to face the fact that all my competitors had the same or similar products, all with features and benefits. After going out day after day to “slay the dragon”, I came back empty handed and discouraged. Sharing my dismay with an older mentor, he asked me an important question. He said, “with all things being equal, how do you decide to send your money on something ?”.
A simple question but one that prompted an immediate reply, “ Of course”, I said. “under those circumstances I do business with someone I know, trust, and like”.
The answer was so obvious that it had escaped me. In order to develop a long term sales career, I need to focus on knowing my client and then selling myself first. Well it sounds simple but it is astounding how many sales people, in the heat of battle and the pressures created management, forget that they are in a marathon not a sprint.
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HI John
I really enjoy your writing style.
If a company did not market would the sales person still be able to sell. Marketing is the presentation of a product or service, the strategy that is involved in how a company expresses itself to the customers.
Who should listen to who as they are different types of people who both think that there way is the right way. A sales persons purpose is to sell and they will sell there concept to the marketing department whom also sells their concepts and would prefer not to be told how to do there job.
Wow, this is something to think about. Thanks.