May 2006

Marketing and Sales: Can This Marriage be Saved?
By Victoria Hayden, The Hayden Group

Who started this rift between Marketing and Sales anyway?

Good marketing folks would never develop a marketing program without input from sales.

Good sales professionals understand that the brand of a product or service is integral to the sale.

Unfortunately, in far too many companies, Marketing ignores Sales and Sales ignores Marketing.

The “Pizza Strategy”

When I was a VP Account Director with J. Walter Thompson on B-to-B products and services, I would receive initial input from the clients’ marketing folks. Typically, marketing folks would provide copious amounts of information written or articulated in “corporate speak.” Translating the copious prose into meaningful, focused information to the creative folks who created the ads was tough. Creative people want to know – in customer language – what the product does, how customers use it, and why it is better. So I developed my “pizza strategy” for obtaining meaningful marketing input.

Sales is on the Front Lines

Now, whenever I need input to develop a marketing campaign, I invite the sales staff to a pizza lunch in a client conference room. During the “pizza session,” we talk like real people about real sales calls. What do you really say to customers and prospects? What do they really say to you? Tell me your best success story. Tell me about your most memorable failure. Sales folk, recounting the actual words of customers and prospects, provide the best ideas, insights and headlines for advertising – short of talking directly to the customer.

So given how invaluable Sales can be to developing marketing campaigns, what is the source of the typical disconnect between Marketing and Sales? Face it. Each side does things that annoy the other.

Things Sales Folks do that Drive Marketing Folks Crazy

Sales people sometimes:

• Refuse to use the sales support materials provided by Marketing. If the materials are not helping, Sales should let Marketing know about the problems. If junior marketing staff won’t listen, Sales should escalate the issue.

• Replace company sales support materials, including PowerPoint presentations, with home-grown materials. Too many sales people delude themselves into believing that their amateur materials look professional.

• Refuse to learn and use technologies implemented to enhance the sales process, such as sales portals and sales automation. If not all sales folks use Salesforce, for example, not all activity is tracked and the reports are invalid.

• Slam the company ad campaign. Sadly, the ad campaign may, in fact, be awful. But undermining the company to a prospect will make the company look bad and make the sales person look unprofessional. Even more important, the sales person probably will not get the sale because the prospect would not trust him or her, and would probably wonder what the sales person says about his customers.

• Avoid talking to Marketing. How will Sales ever make things better if they don’t talk to their marketing colleagues?

Things Marketing Folks do that Drive Sales Folks Crazy

On the other hand, too many marketing people:

• Create a brand positioning without input from the target market, Sales or both.

• Create sales support materials without input from frontline sales people. Leaving out input from the sales folks results in materials that are too cumbersome to use, and allows for no customization. This includes both online and offline materials.

• Implement sales support technologies without buy-in from Sales.

• Create sales portals without input from Sales. This results in content that is not organized in ways Sales folks really use that kind of information.

• Launch an ad or direct-marketing campaign to the marketplace before launching it with Sales.

• Fail to deliver leads to Sales in a timely manner.

• Avoid talking with Sales. How will you ever make things better if you don’t talk?

Money and Accountability

Marketing is always going to think more money should be spent on advertising and other marketing programs. And Sales is always going to think more money should be spent on Sales. Truth is, probably both are right. So budget fights between Marketing and Sales will likely continue.

So what about accountability? Most sales folks work on salary plus commission. Make the sale, get the commission. No sale; no commission. What about Marketing? Marketing departments can control tens and hundreds of millions of dollars. Where is the accountability for that money? Developing marketing plans with measurable goals and reviewing those plans with Sales are good places to start. But could greater accountability for marketing expenditures be achieved?

In past marketing positions, I attempted to improve accountability within my department and to foster greater trust with Sales. I initiated dialogue with my sales peers to attempt to link part of my salary, and the salaries of my directors, to sales goals – but we never got past the discussion stage. If any of you have any ideas about creating a stronger link between marketing and sales performance, I would love to hear about it.

Copyright© 2006, The Hayden Group. All rights reserved.

About the Author: Victoria Hayden, a partner with The Hayden Group, has more than two decades of marketing leadership experience. She has worked for a number of Fortune 500 companies in the telecommunications, transportation and health-insurance industries. The Hayden Group, http://www.thehaydengroup.com, specializes in brand "facelifts" and marketing launches for companies and products. They help companies strategically define their brand, articulate it for the highest impact, and integrate it into marketing efforts, PR, and Web. Email: victoria@thehaydengroup.com.