Know-How Exchange : Strategy

Jo,

I have a different set of roles and responsibilities when it comes to sales and marketing than the argument you describe would imply. Marketing "aims" sales toward the right set of customers to achieve the corporate strategy. In B2B, this includes companies in a priority down to the right functions within the corporate. In B2C - it's a detailed description of the prospects and where to find them. In both cases it also involves detailed descriptions of motivations, influencers (words and images), and everything else about the people to whom sales would sell that would support that process. Marketing then provides collateral material to support the sale and a portfolio of activities to drive brand recognition, educate the prospects on the company and products and/or services and how they satisfy the needs of the customers better than the competitive solutions. Marketing also helps with sales scripts and training of the sales team.

Marketing acquires the data on the market and customers via secondary data and primary data. Sales is intimately involved with any gathering of primary data. Sales also reviews the marketing strategy and enters into a healthy give and take discussion and assists in the validation process. When the process is done, marketing and sales management form a consensus on the plan and routinely review it as time goes on to make sure it's still right with the company and environment.

Now, notice that NOWHERE did I mention that marketing provides leads - warm or otherwise. This is part of the sales process. If the leads are from telemarketing, then it's sales who controls that. It's it's leads from trade shows, then sales is part of the trade show - both setting up the trade show process and goals and manning the booth. They run down the leads. If it's from the website, sales buys into the website offer that generates the leads and inside sales/outside sales follow them up. Marketing can be measured on the number of leads resulting from marketing activities and also on the quality of the leads coming in, however, since these attributes of the marketing effort. And marketing is responsible for hitting the goals set out via the process (goals made jointly with sales).

The sticky part of this description is that IF marketing is not coordinated between product lines, sales may receive conflicting messages and a drain of sales resources. This usually results in sales picking the best and easiest "marketing organization" with whom to work. The other departments end up badmouthing the sales team and vise versa.

The other caution in this happy world I describe is that the top sales guy and the top marketing guy have to be a team and work together and demand their teams work together.

I hope this helps.

Wayde

The best way to bridge this gap is to close it.

Marketing (in a B2B world -- you don't have leads in a B2C world; that's the demand your channel fulfills) generates leads for sales to close. The better the leads, the happier everyone is. The best way to do this is to qualify them early on in your process.

Don't turn over a bucket of business cards from a trade show to the sales admin. Capture the leads at your trade show (or webinar, or newsletter, or direct mail campaign/white paper download, roadshow, etc.) and ensure you've got heavy qualifiers built in to the capture process.

Get your sales team's input and agreement on what "qualified" means -- what budget does your lead have this year, who makes the decision, is the person at the show a decision maker/influencer/nobody, have they looked at yours/competitive product already, have they made a decision to buy but are still evaluating alternatives, etc.

Once both of you have an agreement, build your lead generation and capture process together.

Then, accept the accolades and congratulations that are rightfully yours.

Good luck!

It is discussions like this that justify the 40 minutes or so a day I spend reading this forum. Wayde and Kathy both posted some great thoughts...

From the level of the man on the street, I have seen a couple of discussions that actually worked to solve this discussion (running gunbattle between sales and marketing folks).

Here is what we did...
1) put a metric on how much the leads cost. what we found was that leads generated from trade press media cost $105 dollars each.
2) talk about what could be improved about the lead.
3) asked the question, how much would it cost us if we got just a little more information $110/lead? $150/lead? etc.
4) sat down with sales and said, do you know how you could find "real new customers" for less money?
5) ended up with a program that paid distributor sales people for bringing our people into an account that we hadnt been in before...

Great conversation, great exercise... and the metrics (and data) changed the whole tone of the relationship.

Since when does EVERY person your advertising, marketing or sales AUTOMATICALLY become a sales lead?

Do fishermen measure their catch by the numer of fish in the sea, or do they measure their catch by the number in their net, or the number of fish that make it to the hold, or the number of fish delivered to the market?

There is a certain amound of 'loss' at each point along the way, and you lose a lead or a customer the same way. While I like the idea of the sales process being a funnel, I fundamentally disagree that everyone who slips into the funnel is expected to be processed through to the bottom. Like fisherman, you lose a few who escape the net, and you lose a few on the way to the hold. Some fish go bad on the dock, and not every fish makes it to market.

Marketing and Sales may well be two different departments, but they have simliar responsibilities. While marketing works to fill the funnel, sales is expected to process the sale to closing. Both should be working to walk the customer to closing. At what point exactly does marketing pass the customer to sales for closing? Is there a tipping point or hand off point? Like has been said...you have a gap in responsibilities...and you have two departments pointing fingers at each other. Work to close the gap, define roles and responsibilities, and get those two departments to realize they need to overlap and work together. When one falls down, the other should fill in to cover. If both pull back....may as well quit taking the boat out of the harbor.

We all wish we could catch a fish with each cast of the net. Its a fact of life that not every cast ends up in a fish, let alone a big tuna...tell sales to get used to it. If they insist on perfect leads that always end in a sale, make them accountable for every fish that doesn't make it to the table. Fair is fair, right? oh wait, I bet Sales has all kinds of excuses for less than perfection too.

If it was easy, we'd all be doing it.

Darcy Moen
Customer Loyalty Network

Jo,

Personally (and professionally) I believe sales has to pick up the slack if marketing isn't doing the job. This comes from many years in sales so I'm not pointing fingers without knowing where it's pointing.

The "I need warmer leads" complaint falls on deaf ears to me. We did some work for an international company that refused to change it's marketing policy...even when we convinced them the changes would help. (I usually avoid customers like that!) They could easily have made simple changes that would have helped the sales people. BUT sales people are not allowed to blame lack of success on someone else. (my opinion)

I don't think the greatest marketing dept will ever be able to replace a good sales force but I do believe a great sales force can eliminate the need for an in-house marketing department.

Just rambling.......

Michael

Sorry to be hasty before...

... for general advice from myself and others, check out:
https://www.marketingprofs.com/ea/qst_question.asp?qstid=15110

For specific advice, we need more info, e.g.:

- Do you sell to businesses, consumers, or the Government?

- Do you sell hardware, software, services?

- How unique or innovative is your product? How many competitors do you have?

- What country are you in? Do you sell regionally, nationally, internationally?

- If you sell thru employees - are they straight commission, or base plus commission? Do you sell thru agents? Channel partners? Resellers?

- Do you have a centralized CRM system?

- is your offering high margin (in which case you want maximum market penetration) or is your offering low margin (in which you need max ROI on marketing).

- How is the quality of your marketing materials?

- Are you a manufacturer, or a reseller? If a manufacturer, do you offer marketing coop dollars? If a reseller, do you have access to these funds?

- How long is your sales cycle?

- What existing "empires" are in place? For example, do you have a telesales department or a "pre-sales" department which needs to be kept busy?

- Most important - what has been tried before, which failed (and why). Very likely, someone tried to do something intelligent in the past, but the plug was pulled too early. This time, will management commit the time and resources necessary?

etc., etc. etc. Lots of details. Per my previous post, I've worked this problem for many companies in many industries in many situations, and would be glad to talk with you outside calling hours. Click my profile to the right for my contact info.

I would not cold call because there is no need to do it. Naturally I'm shooting a bit from the hip here, but I'm guessing that decisions would be made by the owner of the HVAC or other service firm - and their contact info is easily and inexpensively obtainable via www.goleads.com and www.zapdata.com and infousa and dozens of other sources.

A long term "educational" approach by phone would not be well received by the folks who will be answering the phone... a "drip marketing" campaign (e.g. series of postcards and letters) coordinated with follow-up of inquiries by your sales staff will get you where you need to go. Your major challenge will be convincing your CEO to spend the money for a first class, sustained campaign.