Top 10 Reasons Marketeers Roll Their Eyes at Sales Reps

BNET TalkbackShare your ideas and expertise on this topic

Subscribe to this discussion via Email or RSS

•  
  1

  Anon2800

  09/22/09 | Report as spam

  RE: Top 10 Reasons Marketing Rolls Their Eyes at Sales Reps

  Cold calls with no marketing support may work in your podunk little company with $1m in sales, but going out there with no strategy and an arrogant attitude when you have real numbers to hit in a decent sized market and you'd get eaten alive. Everything in this post in completely unfounded and a waste of cyberspace.

•  
  2

  Geoffrey James, Sales Machine

  09/22/09 | Report as spam

  RE: Top 10 Reasons Marketing Rolls Their Eyes at Sales Reps

  Re Note 1:
  Little unclear whether you're criticizing the post (i.e. the original comment) or my response to them.
  
  I've got no arguments with marketing when it focuses on lead generation, with marketing compensation based upon conversion rates.
  
  What I object to is unmeasured marketing efforts that are assumed to "create demand" but which are actually have no impact whatsoever on revenue.

•  
  3

  DebF

  09/23/09 | Report as spam

  Is bad grammar one of the reasons?

  Your heading should read either "rolls its eyes" or "roll their eyes". If a marketing pitch contained such bad grammar, it would put me off immediately.

•  
  4

  jad67

  09/23/09 | Report as spam

  RE: Top 10 Reasons Marketing Rolls Their Eyes at Sales Reps

  Re Note 2: I've forgotten too which is the BS - the 10 reasons why not the 10 reasons why, or vice versa...
  
  Did get far enough to agree 100% that if Marketing can't point unequivocally to the demand they/it created then it's just a cost centre
  
  
  

•  
  5

  Geoffrey James, Sales Machine

  09/23/09 | Report as spam

  RE: Top 10 Reasons Marketing Rolls Their Eyes at Sales Reps

  Re Note 3:
  You raise an interesting question. The problem is that the original writer was using an expression that refers to a human behavior, but applying that behavior to a collective noun. Saying "rolling its eyes" would imply that "marketing" was some kind of entity -- like a ogre, maybe -- that has a pair of eyes to roll. So in this case, it's probably better (as the writer did) to use "marketing" as a stand-in for "the marketing group", all of whom are rolling their individual eyes.

•  
  6

  DebF

  09/23/09 | Report as spam

  Individual eyes?

  Re note 5: One at a time or both together? Seriously, though - you can't use a singular form of the verb and a plural pronoun together.

•  
  7

  tj14

  09/23/09 | Report as spam

  RE: Top 10 Reasons Marketing Rolls Their Eyes at Sales Reps

  Wow Geoffrey really needed to stretch to make a BS claim for these. They were mostly weak.

•  
  8

  middleaged

  09/24/09 | Report as spam

  RE: Top 10 Reasons Marketing Rolls Their Eyes at Sales Reps

  'Sales only sell what is easy to sell' - Possibly this is because the items that are easy to sell are the best, most highly competitive products. The other products may well be useless, or introduced on a marketing whim.
  One of the key skills in sales is that of qualification - you only work on the stuff that has a good chance of success - work on the other stuff and you are probably wasting time that could have been spent searching for more 'closable' opportunities.
  The business world has moved on, most projects are scrutinised intently by companies with well paid and savvy purchasing groups, and more business savvy engineers, managers and production groups.
  Waste your time on the duff stuff, and you are likely to get sacked for not meeting your numbers.
  
  'Sales people give up at target' - Have yet to meet a sales guy that has ever done this - would be especially stupid if they were on commission. Stop working and your earnings drop. Besides there is always next year to worry about. In my industry (and likely many others) the majority of the results in the first quarter of the year are down to the efforts in the previous year. Few effective salespeople ever 'take their foot off the gas' - it is sales career suicide.
  
  'Businesses fail because sales (among others fail to listen to marketing.' Good job GM had a strong marketing team. Companies often don't listen to salespeople either, especially if they don't make their message relevant to the person they are communicating with.
  Given the marketing team are so good at communicating, you would think they would have mastered the internal sell.
  
  For the avoidance of doubt, this is a response to the marketing response - some of which was fair, as sales guys aren't perfect either.
  

•  
  9

  Heather Goodwin

  09/24/09 | Report as spam

  RE: Top 10 Reasons Marketing Rolls Their Eyes at Sales Reps

  Geoffrey:
  
  1. I obviously hit a nerve, didn't I?
  
  2. The 'BS' is just bitching - but it allowed you to get paid for double the page content
  
  3. If you are going to use my content, please be kind enough to credit me, otherwise I believe the term is 'plagiarism'.
  
  Thank you
  
  Heather Goodwin
  original respondent.

•  
  10

  Heather Goodwin

  09/24/09 | Report as spam

  RE: Top 10 Reasons Marketing Rolls Their Eyes at Sales Reps

  @Post 3, the original was grammatically correct, unfortunately a salesperson then got going with a red pen.

•  
  11

  Geoffrey James, Sales Machine

  09/24/09 | Report as spam

  RE: Top 10 Reasons Marketing Rolls Their Eyes at Sales Reps

  Re Note 9:
  Credited on the main post, as requested. However, it wasn't plagiarism because the comment was posted anonymously. (Handles don't count.) If you had signed your name to it originally, I would have credited it, naturally. Instead, I stated that the post came from a comment and pointed to the post containing the comment.

•  
  12

  Geoffrey James, Sales Machine

  09/24/09 | Report as spam

  RE: Top 10 Reasons Marketing Rolls Their Eyes at Sales Reps

  Re Note 10:
  The complaint in post 3 was about your original title, which I reproduced verbatim.
  
  I changed "marketing" to "marketeers" to correct your grammatical error.

•  
  13

  Anon2800

  09/24/09 | Report as spam

  RE: Top 10 Reasons Marketing Rolls Their Eyes at Sales Reps

  Re Note 2:
  
  All of it, really. The existence of this entire series of nit-picking,
  to me, is more indicative of a poorly run sales/marketing
  operation than it is a useful exchange of feedback. It's nothing
  but pointing fingers with baseless accusations and
  generalizations.