Know-How Exchange : Other

Well, mbarber certainly has a strong opinion on this subject!

It's the eternal battle of sales vs. marketing - who is more important?

From a general point of view, I would have to say both are crucial to the success of a company.

The sales people may be in the trenches making pitches, giving presentations, product demos, etc. It is a frequent complaint from the sales department THEY need the marketing team to create or design something they THINK is necessary secondary to the feedback and/or brainstorming sessions within their department.

Marketing is the red-headed step-child of the business community. Frequently confused as sales and merely "ad designers". What most fail to recognize is without the direction, strategies, research, branding, surveys, etc. developed by the marketing team, the sales team would not know who, where, what, or why to sell. Companies who have droves of sales reps pounding pavement blindly and/or based on their own opinions on the appropriate target rarely make it very far. Some do well and keep their heads above water, most end up drowning or calling some consultant to the rescue. What kind of consultant? A marketing consultant! Imagine that!

OK. Enough of the sales vs. marketing thing and onto recognition.

I couldn't agree more with mbarber on this aspect. You are the leader. Therefore, it is up to you to provide moral support to your team every day! Not only that, but it is also your duty to make the accomplishments well known to the upper management. Granted, the areas you mentioned usually do receive the most attention because they are at the end of the money cycle. Sales, AR, CRM, etc. push the products, collect the money and make the customers happy. This equals revenue and revenue makes CEOs/Presidents smile. It's the bottom line. Meanwhile, you guys are tucked away in the back of the building, feeling unappreciated.

So what can you do SPECIFICALLY? It depends on how receptive the upper management is to you. It also depends on your rapport with the sales manager. IN any case, here is what I would recommend:

Call a meeting between you and the sales manager. Tell them you feel there is an ongoing misunderstanding about each other's role in the company's success. In an effort to understand each other, you would like to do a series of pseudo cross-training. You may want to call it "observation". For a period of 3-5 days each, a member of the sales team will shadow someone in the marketing department and vice versa. The arrangement can vary but I think you catch my drift.

After the observations are over, have a meeting with both teams in a sort of Q&A environment. This may help bridge some of the gaps. Take minutes and make every effort to note every question and every answer. Tape it if you need to. At the end, ask everyone if they found this to be a helpful experience.

Convert all the results into a comprehensive report and present it to the CEO or the appropriate upper management channel. In the report, be sure to explain how what you just did was a form of marketing and as a result, two feuding departments now have a new respect and understanding for one another and explain how this affects the bottom line.

I hope you can see the inherent value in such an exercise and see how you can turn it into an example of the importantance of marketing.

I hope this helps!

Good Luck!