Nobody is perfect. Sales nor marketing. I'm more of a marketer by trade, but marketers and salespeople are fooling themselves if they don't acknowledge the assets within themselves and each other.
Each marketer needs a sense of how to sell. Every salesperson needs to understand the importance of marketing. But marketers don't need to know how to cold call, and salespeople don't need to know how to manage media, formulate campaigns, create branded materials, etc...
Still with me, here's where it gets good....
Much like brothers (or sometimes sisters) they two fight. One blames the other, one says the other doesn't know what the other needs, you've been there before or were in the middle of it like I have been.
Marketing Departments don't know sales, the technique, what it takes, how to apply it, or what it's like day to day with the customer. Plain and simple. Marketing thinks it knows the day to day life of sales. They think because they listen they know, but you don't know what it's like until you have done it, and continue to do it.
Sales Departments, salespeople don't know marketing. Sales assistants may create flyers, and mail out post cards to customers. Good for you. That's not marketing. Face it, you don't know it on a mass scale. Market yourself, yes - great - real estate agents call themselves marketers. Anyone can sit back and backseat design a logo, but market and brand the company, don't think so.
The Realization, EpiphanyWalk a mile in the othe's shoes. Yes, get out and do it. Go for a week and cold call, walk into customer's offices, upsell, manage etc... Salespeople, take a week and run email, manage the website, get sales materials created, whatever. Get in and get your hands dirty.
But also realize sales is driven by the paycheck and marketing is driven by results. The two are very different and need to be reviewed as to how they align and contradict one another in the organization.
For Example:
If a sales team is incentivized for selling X, but the marketing team finds better efficiencies in product y. Marketing will push Y over X, and Sales will wonder why marketing is working against their paycheck. Remember money is personal, so moving from professional immediately into the personal space is dangerous for any department.
I once inherited 2000 sales people who were convinced they required 3 leads, new leads a day. They did not care about cost, although the managers did, they did not care about media, they wanted 3. With 3 they could make a good living. However, in marketing we determined if we gave them 1 of the "right kind of leads" - the ones they converted well - per day, they would do just as well and costs would fall. They viewed it as taking money out of their pockets.
Later we realized the failings and worked at the approach. With 1 lead they could spend time reviewing old leads, cold leads and developing local relationships they wanted. In essence, if they were to convert the same number of people per month, we essentially gave them better quality leads and more time to make more money. This was received much better and enthusiastically then just taking away 2 leads a day.
Really the worst was selling Meat Door to Door. And you say - "How do you do that?", "How can you?". It's possible and it does or did happen. Yes, I was 15 and my mom dropped me off at the job opening and they said - hop in a truck. So I did, next thing I know I'm walking door to door.
The guy, Sam who was may mentor in door to door meat said "the best approach is to knock on the door and quickly ask 'Do you like meat?' " Simple but easy. If they said yes, they were a customer. If no, move on. Stay out on the route until you emptied your truck.
It was brutal, and yet guys did this everyday. And for the customers it was a good deal and a good product. For me I learned what possibly could have been one of the worst sales jobs to take.
The point- I can empathize. I can understand for that position. Since then, I've gone out in the field with the sales teams and walked the beat. Listened, observed, and asked lots of questions.
Can you say you have? You can't unless you've gone out with the sales manager and sales associate. You can't unless you've sat in the marketer's chair.
In every head of marketing role, I've made it a point that my staff and me spend time in the field. This may be on the phone or in a branch or in a car, but we are in the field. For a few days here, or there, learning the regions, the people, the key account, etc. You have got to walk through fire together to make it happen together. I even send my creative teams out with the sales people. Why? Aside from the creatives getting hit left and right with suggestions, comments and unsolicited reviews. Because they now have a point of view not only of the sales team, but the sales process and the customer.
Our conversations after 3 months of rotating in and out of the sales teams were incredibly richer with content, first person experiences and continuity. Those with little experience, suddenly had a wealth of experience to draw from, and that was the begining.
It may not be a real war. But the two can work together. The motivations are different, but the right leaders can monetarily and emotionally lead the two teams to success. It's possible. It takes work and the metamorphosis is not overnight. But when the two fire together it can be magic. It is worth fighting for the right people, the right departmental organization and compensation structure, otherwise expect in-fighting and a degradation of interaction, efficiency and teamwork from sales and marketing.
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