1. Sales and Marketing have different perspectives, but collaboration, and common objectives will go a long way to creating cohesion. Transparency is critical.
2. The “Farmer’s Field” is an excellent analogy for effective cooperation.  Marketing plants the seed, and cares for the plants while they are growing. Sales conducts the harvest.  Sales must save some of the harvest to generate seeds for the next crop. Without Marketing, Sales cannot harvest. Without Sales, Marketing cannot plant.

This ITAC/SMA Marketing & Sales Executive Think Tank was hosted at Hitachi Data Systems in Mississauga, Ontario by Luis Paveloski, Marketing Manager. The discussion was moderated by Bob Becker, Principal, SMA.

Attendees

• Eric David, Executive VP Strategy, CSDC Systems Inc.
• Alex MacKay, CEO & Founder, CWWR Inc.
• Gilles Philippe, Canadian Marketing Manager, Dell Canada Corporation
• Shannon Beattie, Marketing Manager, Eclipsys Solutions
• Chub Letenyei, Consultative Marketing Manager, EMC
• Julia Falotico, Marketing Coordinator, ESI Technologies
• Claude Couillard, Canadian Field Marketing Manager, Hewlett-Packard (Canada) Co.
• Luis Paveloski, Marketing Manager, Hitachi Data Systems
• Craig Taylor, Client Executive, Channels, Lenovo
• Susan Gershman, Consultant, Prophix Software
• Liana Leider, Marketing Analyst, QHR Technologies
• Yousif Hussain, Marketing Intern, Security Compass Inc.
• Kelly Luo, Marketing Manager, Sigma Software Solutions
• Mike Smyth, Marketing Database Analyst, Softchoice Corporation
• Paul McDevitt, Business Leader in Marketing Sales, Services/Marketing Strategy Operations, Unity Connected Solutions

What We Learned

• Sales and Marketing have different perspectives, but collaboration, and common objectives will go a long way to creating cohesion. Transparency is critical.
• The “Farmer’s Field” is an excellent analogy for effective cooperation. Marketing plants the seed, and cares for the plants while they are growing. Sales conducts the harvest. Sales must save some of the harvest to generate seeds for the next crop. Without Marketing, Sales cannot harvest. Without Sales, Marketing cannot plant.
• Conducting structured debriefs after marketing activities is an excellent method for Sales and Marketing to collaboratively analyze shared goals, campaign successes and failures, and learn for improvement.
• As Marketing’s role becomes less “one-to-many” to more “one-to-one”, and encroaching on Sales territory, better communication is critical.

What’s your view of the Marketing role in an organization?

• Things have changed lately – the dynamic of customers self-educating before touching Sales or Marketing changes at what point customers drop into the Sales cycle. Leads today may be too far down the Sales process – the transition from Marketing to Sales is happening too late in the process.
• Marketing is no longer just one function: it’s evolved into two main categories: Corporate Marketing for awareness and Field Marketing for generating leads for the pipeline. Corporate Marketing involves one to many communications; but at the Field level it becomes one to one communication. Marketing is also segmented into various functions such as digital, social, event marketing. And within these different functions, it can be segmented even further based on the goals, such as acquiring, developing or retaining customers.
• Marketing needs to focus internally as much as externally, ensuring every employee is able to reflect the brand. This includes all areas of the company that touch customers, ensuring they enhance the Sales/Marketing effort.
• Marketing should also be providing insight into the competition and market to better equip Sales.
• Marketing includes sales enablement, which is about demand generation and supporting sales efficiency and effectiveness while representing the brand. Marketing also includes nurturing to get leads into the pipeline, often before lead generation.

What’s your view of the Sales role in an organization?

• Sales is responsible for the one-to-one representation of the company, at the front end of the organization.

What role should Sales play, other than selling?

• Sales should be actively providing feedback to Marketing: on the market, on customers, on Marketing campaigns. To do that, you need to identify the great Sales people or Sales advocates who proactively engage with Marketing. Sales provide the “street smarts” of the organization.
• Maintain existing customer relationships.
• To obtain business intelligence from the Sales organizations, some leverage the pre-Sales organization to obtain this information.  Pre-Sales are often more knowledgeable about the product, and exposed to a broader range of customers.  A pre-Sales organization that reports to Marketing can create a great relationship that bridges Marketing and Sales.

What challenges does Sales experience?

• Pressure to make Sales quotas – to the exclusion of all else – is the root cause of many of the problems with Sales. But KPI’s for sales people are changing away from purely quota.
• Sales people are often not well-respected inside the company, although they are the “go-to” resource for customers, which can take them away from selling.  Sales needs more knowledge and skills than ever before – every day brings something new to learn.

From a Marketing standpoint, what’s your biggest frustration with Sales and how to you suggest solving it?

Challenge: Sales doesn’t always understand the Marketing role, or the messages.  Sales doesn’t always understand that Marketing also has a relationship with the customer, and Sales often becomes protective of their customers as resources.  Sales often fails to act on Marketing leads. 

Solution: Much of this can be solved by better communications. Some participants conduct Sales & Marketing meetings or create Sales/Marketing committees to discuss pipelines, campaigns, market uniqueness, wish lists etc. as a way to define Marketing programs, taking into account what Sales needs.

Challenge: Sales is often reluctant to put in the work that will help Marketing to calculate campaign ROI – for instance keying information into the CRM system. 

Solution: Define compensation plans based on Sales providing this type of input.

Challenge: Sales & Marketing management are often disconnected, which trickles all the way down through the organizations.

Challenge: Field Marketing budgets are often dictated by Sales, which diverts funds away from Marketing campaigns and to more immediate short-term programs.  Net result is that field Marketing becomes ineffective.

Solution: One solution is to have funding controlled by both Sales and Marketing, which can help balance the spending.

Challenge: When the times get tough, the weird get weirder.  When performance suffers, Marketing is challenged for short-term results, which can lead knee-jerk programs driven by Sales. 

Solution: The solution is to stay strategic, and work the plan.  Sales needs to understand the value of the strategy and plan.

From a Sales standpoint, what’s your biggest frustration with Marketing and how to you suggest solving it?

Challenge: Marketing trying to get closer to customers, makes Sales feel roles are overlapping, and Marketing is overstepping bounds.

Solution: Understand where the stakeholders are:  Marketing needs to sell to the Sales organization as well as the customers.

Challenge: Product versus solution approach.  Marketing can over-complicate the selling process by focusing on a strategic solution approach, which takes time and effort and can eat up the budget.  When the crunch comes, Sales often ends up focusing purely on product Sales to make their numbers, not selling the solution. 

Solution: Acknowledge that purely product Sales are viable contributors to revenue, and account for this in Marketing campaigns.

Challenge: Goals are disconnected – throughout the funnel.

Solution: Need to find common ground between Sales and Marketing with shared objectives. Sales should be involved in establishing objectives that Marketing will executive on. Each organizations needs to more clearly understand the other’s needs, and they need to work together to establish common goals.

Challenge: Rogue or shadow marketing. If Marketing efforts are not perceived as valuable, Sales may set up a shadow marketing function. Often happens when Sales is driven to perform and is frustrated that Marketing can’t help.  This can confuse customers, affect brand image, and may be ineffective due to Sales lack of knowledge of Marketing.

Solution: The pipeline should be owned by both Marketing and Sales.

Challenge: Marketing is often not agile enough to respond to Sales needs, due to the advance planning and budget allocation they go through.