Know-How Exchange : Strategy

Basic principle of B2B marketing ... we are there to support the sales activity, play that card and they will start to like you, start to deliver on the promise and they will love you.

B2B Marketing principles:

Support Sales - lead generation, literature, merchandise, presentations, demos, bid analysis, templates etc

Focus on brand management - ensure all the brand touch points are well trained, well informed and well motivated.

Propositions - get your propositions and messages out to the touch points and undersood by them

Customer and Prospect profiling - help sales understand their perfect customer profile

Customer Retention - you do not want to lose a single customer, fine tune your retention programmes.

SUMMARY:
Deliver on these and sales will love you and help you and be your best mate.

Good Luck

Brian

When I work with companies to solve this problem I start with an old principle . . . the best way to turn enemies into partners is to have each clean one side of the same window at the same time.

It's more complex than can be described here and the coaching engagements I take on to deal with this sometimes take a while to craft and execute . . . and a while more to start to have an effect.

One place I start though is an easy one. Send the marketers on sales calls. Let them meet the customers and prospects, watch the sales people work with prospects, see what is really happening after the lead is generated. Similarly, bring the sales force into strategic marketing discussions (strategic not tactical—don't involve them with discussion about brochure design and so forth). Let them come to understand how business focused and complex good marketing is.

But as I say, there are no generic answers--this is a cultural issue and your corporate culture has to be understood before the problem can be solved. But yours won't be the first nor the last that has faced it and solved it.

I feel a collaboration of all the above advice is worthy of your time.

However, my initial reaction to your question ( and what he others basically said in a round-about way) is you absolutely have to establish effective COMMUNICATION between the two teams in order to gain each other's respect.

First, hold a meeting...or rather a "bitch session". Let it all out! Make sure management is there to moderate.

During or after the meeting, have every person write down what he/she would like to see changed and/or improved upon by the other department.

Use this feedback to establish a "cross-training" sit-in, as mrf described, so the members of the respective teams can see first hand what hurdles, frustrations etc the other experiences.

Afterwords, hold another meeting...I bet the responses and attitudes will be quite different and the beginning of a rapport will be established. It may be a slow process, but you guys have to get along in order for the company to function at optimum levels.

Good Luck!

I have been in this same situation in the past.

I think mrf was right when saying that it is a cultural situation and you have to know the company and the issues therein.

I tried many of the things described by the group responding and they are all great ideas. However, it took sometime to realize that the culture of the company was one that came from the top down. In my particular case, the President of the company believed that marketing was a place to get a brochure "printed" or a business card "printed". So, in fact, he had a very expensive print shop with nine people with Marketing degrees and one secretary.

While a great company with great products, there were issues that arose due to the lack of marketing. As a result, out of team of 10 very talented and dedicated staff, only one remains. The rest of us realized that marketing was always going to be a print shop and that we could not change this perception because the President preached it.

Since I left, the Marketing Division has disappeared and their image management and branding has declined. I have seen a great deal of their collateral over the past two years and you would never know that one company was producing it. The worst part of course is that they have lost customers as some no longer know what direction the company is taking and two offices have closed. Still to this day, when I speak to the President, he does not see that they are not "marketing" the company. He still says that they need to make new brochures for the sales people. "Brochures for the sales people"....again, missing the target...but I digress.


I am sure that they will survive, but the cost to overcome this, will be great.