Like the happy union of two loving people, watching the marketing and sales departments of a company work in unison is a thing of beauty. And, like a relationship on the rocks, seeing the two groups bicker and fight, is not fun.
For a company to be successful these two groups need to work well together, be in-synch and operate harmoniously. There will be tension and disagreements but they need to trust each other and be supportive as together they strive for a common goal.
The relationship between Marketing and Sales is very much like a marriage.
Sales is responsible for securing orders from clients, or getting users or consumers to pay for the company’s products. Their ability to be successful in this relies on Marketing.
Marketing is responsible for connecting with a target audience whom the company feels will want to use and purchase their products. Marketing tells the story about the company and brand, and its products. The story conveys and convinces customers that their lives will be better for using these products time and time again.
Depending on the strategy, Marketing can also be responsible for generating leads - leads are people who express some level of interest in the company’s products. These leads can be handed over to Sales and the job of Sales to take the baton and convince these interested parties to make an actual purchase. If the company’s business model needs the sales team to have good leads, and Marketing hands over leads that are not-so-great, we have a problem and the marriage between Marketing and Sales drifts into rocky waters.
Lead generation is a major source of tension between the sales and marketing departments. Sales can complain about the quality and quantity of leads provided by Marketing. Sales team members need a steady stream of leads or potential accounts to call on to secure orders. The company expects and pays Sales people to generate client orders and often a healthy portion of their compensation is directly tied to the orders they secure. So if they don’t receive a regular volume of leads, they get cranky. Or, if the leads they do get end up being a waste of time they also become unhappy. Poor leads are where the prospect never really had a genuine interest in the company’s product and the salesperson wasted their time. Not good.
Typically Marketing will undertake some efforts to validate the quality of leads their programs generate - qualifying these leads helps reduce the amount of wasted effort expended by the sales team.
Marketing teams often have a portion of their compensation tied to the amount and quality of leads their efforts generate, where lead quality can be judged by how many of those leads result in sales orders. So...if the sales team doesn’t close orders on leads provided to them by the marketing group you can appreciate how this will cause the marketing folks to be irritated. They’ll suggest Sales squandered the leads and wasted the results of their marketing campaigns.
Like a healthy marriage it takes time and effort to make the relationship work. When new products or features are being introduced into the marketing place, the story being conveyed to prospective clients is developed by Product Management or Marketing, delivered by Marketing, and acted upon by Sales. Getting Sales involved in the latter stages of crafting the story helps get their buy-in; they can also help shape the message by relaying anticipated objections from prospects and then work with Product Management and Marketing to refine the messaging for success. Part of the story will reach prospective clients through marketing campaigns...this is the marketing “air cover”. Part of the story will be delivered “door-to-door” or prospect-by-prospect by the sales team members. The sales team has to believe the product and brand story and has to deliver it flawlessly in order for the sales effort to successfully generate client orders.
This happy marriage starts with a strong and respectful relationship between the Head of Marketing and the Head of Sales. Their respective teams carry out the bulk of the work together; there needs to be cohesiveness at the top of each department.
And, even the best of marriages could use a helping hand from time-to-time. That’s where the CEO comes in. They may need to act as a marriage counsellor from time-to-time. The CEO is the best marriage counsellor in this example because a divorce in this relationship is a major blow to the CEO’s objective to execute upon the company vision and strategy, and deliver the results expected of the company. Usually the most important of these objectives is revenue from product sales. To achieve this objective, Marketing has to work well; Sales has to work well. And for *that* to happen Marketing and Sales have to work well *together*.
Thank you for investing time in reading this post. Questions and comments are always welcome.
Shail Paliwal
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