If you missed Geoffrey James’ (aka “Sales Machine”) lambasting of marketing folks in his recent entries “Let’s Fix Marketing for Good” and “Marketing Vs. Sales,” do yourself a favor and give them both a read. His criticisms are representative of many sales folks’ frustrations with their marketing departments.
There’s no doubt that many sales folks are beating their heads against the wall out there wondering why their marketing folks are spending so little time on what should be their most crucial responsibilities (generating more quality leads and lowering the cost of sales). And sure, sometimes “strategic marketing” fluff (around branding, positioning, etc.) indeed strays from what it actually takes to sell the product.
However, IMO — one omission in Mr. James’ critique of marketing is the role that sales folks themselves should (but often do not) play in quality lead generation and lowering the total cost of sales. There are every bit as many marketing folks out there beating their heads against the wall wondering why the sales folks (aka, the people in the organization that have the closest actual contact with the prospective customers) so often:
- Can spend so much time on the fuzzy voodoo of assigning closing probabilities for each deal in the funnel, yet spend zero time sharing feedback with marketing on why each new customer is / is not ultimately buying the product?
- Secured their job based on boasts of “existing industry relationships,” only to immediately complain for lack of leads?
- Have an extremely limited knowledge of the intricacies of the product or the features that distinguish it from the competitors’ products?
- Don’t even bother to read the news about the company they work for?
- Don’t have a higher conversion rate on the quality leads that do exist?
- Are incredibly poor communicators … email correspondences w/ customers riddled with grammar and spelling errors, et al.
The same disapproval for marketing folks taking their eyes off the lead pipeline should be applied to sales folks who do not respect the responsibility that goes along with being the organization’s primary touch point with customers.
Often what I’ve observed is that sales folks are primarily driven to meet their individual quotas, and secondarily concerned with the overall sales success of the company. Rather than taking the time to share critical input on repeatable patterns with the rest of the organization, sales is often simply moving on to the next kill. And when sales folks don’t diligently share that feedback — the organization doesn’t truly understand their target customers, and marketing is truly a pissing in the wind exercise.
(image by Kenyee on flickr creative commons)
