Question

Topic: Strategy

How To Build/organize Marketing Team?

Posted by marketgirl76 on 9/17/2011 at 9:46 PM ET 250 Points
We are looking at better organizing and defining our marketing team (small organization). One question I had was in regards to Business Development. We currently have a Proposal Writer that sits on the Sales team but is providing a lot of marketing functionality. The thought is to move this role under marketing. Where do you typically see proposal response writers sit in an organization? And has anyone seen any good marketing team org charts.
Thanks
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  • Posted by wnelson on 9/17/2011 at 10:22 PM Accepted
    Sarah,

    There's no absolutely perfect organizational structure that fits every organization - otherwise, every organization would be organized that way! Developing an organizational structure is dependent on the company and its environment. Environment meaning its customers and competitors - the world in which it interacts.

    Likewise, proposal writing can be in many different places in the organization. I've seen the role in engineering for high tech businesses. It really depends on your company.

    Marketing is a role ideally to develop a pipeline of prospects predisposed to do business with the company. Part of the role is to understand the customer and his needs and the competition and its ability and lack of ability to satisfy those needs. Then, based on the core competencies of the company, marketing positions the company in a place to better satisfy those needs. Marketing is like "sociology" - the focus is on the "whole" of society versus the individual. Sales, on the other hand, looks at the individual and develops relationships to meet their needs one-on-one. In this way, many companies put proposal writing in sales, since a proposal is a one-to-one relationship with a customer. However, in may organizations, the proposal writing is accomplished by the part of the organization who has to fulfill that proposal and knows most how it is able to do that. Thus, putting it in the engineering organization for a technical or engineering firm. If you are a marketing firm, then perhaps the proposal writing should be in the marketing department.

    So back to the original point: The answer depends on the organization and its environment. To get more specific insight, it may require you to provide us with more specific information.

    I hope this helps.

    Wayde
  • Posted by Peter (henna gaijin) on 9/18/2011 at 11:16 AM Accepted
    The answers above are great, and ones I agree with. There definitely is no set answer.

    That said, I would generally put propasal writing as more of a sales activity, but you did say that this person's role also includes marketing, so I don't have a leaning right now.
  • Posted by Michael Richter on 9/19/2011 at 1:10 AM Accepted
    Hello Sarah,

    may be you find some anwwers/hints also here
  • Posted by marketgirl76 on 9/23/2011 at 5:41 PM Author
    It is something I''m still not 100% sure on. My marketing team sits with a parent company that provides marketing for 4 different companies. I''ve been with the company for years and have built the marketing team out from there. The proposal writing role has sat in sales for one of the sub companies. By pulling this resource into the marketing team, we will be fully servicing the 4th sub company. We can definitely leverage his experience on other content writing, market research etc. when he''s not 100% working on RFP responses. However, by adding him to my team, there''s also accountability for me to be comfortable/sign off on the RFP responses submitted to add value. (my original background is in proposal writing so I have shaped a lot of this role). I''m just worried about my bandwidth as a marketing manager in doing this, but know he could also add value to the team and there is mentoring they see could take place in the proposal role as I have such a strong background there....

    I feel like it''s a bit of a catch 22, but even when they are doing proposal responses they are consulting my team for design ideas for print layouts etc as graphic design sits with me as well - so there has already been overlap. Wasn''t sure if anyone had seen proposal writing sit in their marketing team and their accountability for sign off vs. sales sign off?

    thanks so much
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