It’s Sales AND Marketing, NOT Sales OR Marketing

OVERVIEW

Sales and Marketing departments are critical, integral functions to businesses. As such, they need to work together to ensure that the desired outcome for both functions - sales - occurs. Unfortunately, that often does not happen.

SALES AND MARKETING – TOGETHER AGAIN (OR ARE THEY?)

Sales and Marketing functions have been around as long as there have been businesses, so you would think these organizations would have learned long ago how to co-exist and cooperate. After all, they both want the same thing, for the business to succeed and grow, right?

While it would appear to be so, the reality is often somewhat different.

Although both functions are tasked with engaging prospective customers in the hopes of converting them into actual paying customers and generating new revenue as an outcome, that’s where the similarities end.

That’s also where the competition begins.

COMPETITION IN THE TRENCHES

Competition?

Yes. Sadly, many Sales and Marketing departments see themselves as competitors, instead of viewing themselves as business partners. Instead of organizations that are aligned in pursuit of a common goal, they prefer to create more barriers between them.

Due to this, competition between Sales and Marketing departments often takes pettiness to new levels of idiocy. Questions such as “Can a Marketing person contact a customer without a Sales person on the phone?” or “Should Sales develop their own customer-facing materials without Marketing’s assistance?” take on the characteristics of a turf war, with both departments not willing to back down, compromise or give an inch. Things that should not be an issue are suddenly blown out of proportion and end up impacting the effectiveness of both organizations. Petty jealousies may also rear their ugly heads, such as when the Sales Department received new laptops or cell phones, while the Marketing Department does not.

Other issues, such as which department gets additional headcount, resources or budget also tend to divide the two organizations, as each believes the other to be the recipient of something they are not. While there may be a justifiable business reason for these actions, the end result is often a larger chasm developing between Sales and Marketing, which in turn continues to negatively affect the performance of both organizations.

Instead of these two business-critical functions working together to create better, more efficient ways for them to accomplish their goals and objectives, and oh yeah, by extension, growing the business, they devote their energies to becoming less in sync, less aligned and less productive.

THE IRONIC TRUTH

But the truth is that both Sales and Marketing actually cannot really exist without the other.

What!?!

It’s true. Without the Marketing department, Sales faces an uphill battle to sell, as their product or service may not be well known, the value it provides to a customer is unclear, customers don’t know where to find information, or the company selling it may not even be known. And without the Sales department, Marketing is effectively creating and developing messaging, value props, campaigns, content, and lots of other types of information for no reason (unless they’re going to go out and sell the product themselves, which is highly unlikely).

Ironic, isn’t it?

Both functions may think that they’re indispensable to the business, and they are to some degree. However, the reality is that Sales and Marketing are complementary skills that really only work well when they are used together.

In other words, when they’re aligned with each other.

BRIDGING THE GAP

So what can be done to bridge the gap? How do we close the divide between Sales and Marketing? How can we make it easier for the two departments to work together?

It’s simple, really.

All it takes is a commitment by both the Sales and the Marketing leadership that instead of fighting, their organizations will communicate and cooperate. Agree that they’ll work together instead of competing. Decide that they’ll set aside petty politics and focus on achieving the business goals together. Determine that they’ll help their teams understand that Sales and Marketing really are two sides of the same coin.

In other words, top down leadership.

That’s it.

Top down leadership in this instance means having leaders in both the Sales and the Marketing organizations set the standards of cooperation and communication for their teams. But in order for these to be effective, they must not only model these behaviors, they must practice what they preach.

This can be accomplished by such actions as having the Sales and Marketing leaders issuing a weekly email update to both teams with news and updates on customer wins, how current revenue is tracking to the quarterly goal, how the Marketing tools contributed to Sales success, or other relevant information. Or schedule a regular weekly call or meeting where a representative from each organization can provide updates on activities, problems, cares and concerns. Or have a representative from Sales participate in the weekly Marketing staff meeting, and vice-versa.

The possibilities for improving engagement and alignment between Sales and Marketing are endless, the investment is small, yet the payoff can be significant. And by doing so, the two functions will begin to see and understand that they’re not so different after all and that they really do work better together than apart.

And then it really does become Sales AND Marketing…

© 2019 – Richard Hatheway, Catalyst Strategic Marketing

All rights reserved.