Question

Topic: Strategy

Dividing The Marketing Dept

Posted by Anonymous on 1/22/2008 at 12:12 PM ET 175 Points
Similar to an earlier post, we are considering dividing our marketing department. Currently our marketing personnel handle all corporate and vertical marketing activities. It has been proposed that we split the department, creating a "field marketing" team that reports to a director of sales and maintaining a corporate marketing team that reports to a director of marketing. We are a $20M B2B software company. Can you share your insights on this proposal?
To continue reading this question and the solution, sign up ... it's free!
SUBSCRIBE
Or, SIGN IN

RESPONSES

  • Posted by SteveByrneMarketing on 1/22/2008 at 12:20 PM Member
    Two thoughts:

    It sounds more like a sales and marketing division by whatever creative naming and charting.

    You are a pretty small company for complexity in this area.

    any really useful input would require much more info.
  • Posted by Frank Hurtte on 1/22/2008 at 12:28 PM Member
    Where do both of these directors report?

    Would the field marketing teams support sales people in the field?

    I work the B2B wholesale channel. I have been a proponent of Product Specialists - which are about as close to field marketing as you can get without calling it that. Job descriptions with choreographed plans for handing responsibility from corporate to field to sales becomes very important.

    If you go this way, invest in planning ahead...
  • Posted on 1/22/2008 at 12:40 PM Author
    Thank you for the response. Here is some more background info that may help:

    Our direct sales department restructured about two years ago, assigning sales personnel to specific vertical markets. As part of that, representatives from the marketing dept were assigned to support those vertical teams.

    Though still profitable, our revenues have not met expectations of double-digit growth. This proposal comes in an effort to better focus personnel with the hopes of ultimately increasing revenues.

    We are a small, niche company competing with very large companies with marketing budgets bigger than our total revenue. We target medium to large companies around the globe.
  • Posted on 1/22/2008 at 12:45 PM Author
    The director of sales reports to a VP of sales who reports to the CEO. The director of corporate marketing reports to the CEO.
  • Posted by Tracey on 1/22/2008 at 3:35 PM Accepted
    I don't know what your goals are in relation to your business strategy, so I couldn't say whether it's a good idea or not. But here are some things to consider:

    1. You may lose some consistency (and hence, power of your brand). If communications are created by different departments, they could look inconsistent.

    2. Do the field marketing personnel want to be lifelong marketers? They may not have as much job satisfaction reporting to sales. (See below)

    3. Marketers that report to sales often end up spending a ton of time on creating and maintaining sales tools - and less time on branding, marketing strategy and other marketing tasks aimed toward the broader market. If they report to sales, they'll spend their time on sales support, not marketing.

    4. It's an opportunity for the field marketers to become very knowledgable in their specific vertical. (Do they want to? Do you need that industry expertise to meet your goals? Is that industry expertise held elsewhere - like in product management?)

    5. Perhaps this is just my opinion -- but if they don't report to marketing, I would not include "marketing" in the title. Call them sales support, sales admins, product manager - but not marketer. There is so much confusion about what marketing is and isn't -- this could add to it.

    6. If you make the switch, spend a lot of time making expectations clear. I.e., make expectations for the dir. of marketing clear, as well as the division of labor.
  • Posted on 1/23/2008 at 11:22 AM Author
    Thank you all very much for your insights! It looks as though top management is going to move forward with the split. With the advice you've provided, I'll do what I can to make the best of it. Any additional words of wisdom are much appreciated.
  • Posted on 1/24/2008 at 10:59 AM Author
    Thank you for the link - I'll definitely be taking advantage of it.

    As to weaknesses...our sales funnel grew by >80% last year, and sales revenue grew by 1%. Sales funnels are populated by sales folks; the sales folks decide when a deal should actually hit the funnel or not, which implies some degree of qualification has been done by them.

    From a process standpoint, marketing has collaborated with sales to identify top business needs in our target markets to which we have a solution. We've provided our "best answers" to those business needs to aid in consistency of message and to help raise the competency of our lower performing sales reps. We provide various materials (way beyond traditional product brochures) to support a consultative sale that map directly into various points in the sales process. We've done all of this in an open and transparent way that very much included input from salespeople.

    I'm not sure what conclusions can be drawn from this data. Again, objective insights are very much appreciated.
BACK TO TOP

Post a Comment

Related Discussions

Community Info

Top 25 Experts
(Strategy)