Watched

The Merging of Sales and Marketing

Rate this:

Can your sales and marketing departments continue to work out of separate offices? In this vlog, Grant explains why they both need to merge.

Sales and Marketing used to have something of the Tom and Jerry about it. There was a mutual dependence, but neither one liked the other. Sales people used to be busy knocking on doors and making cold calls and complaining that marketing simply didn’t generate enough leads.

Meanwhile marketing would be responsible for branding, creating brochures, sending out direct mails and leaflets, and complaining that sales people didn’t take the wonderful opportunities they were creating. Of course it never should have been like that. But both departments could kind of get away with it. This is no longer possible because today the channels are merging. Today buyers are much more in control with the purchase journey and they’re using things like Web sites and social media and blogs in order to inform them during that process. Of course marketing departments are often in control of Web sites posting on blogs and running some of the social media channels.

But the Golden Rule is sales has always been to be where your customers are and when it’s online sales people are using LinkedIn, forums and social media in order to stay in contact with their customers. Unless sales and marketing are truly aligned, both strategically and operationally, the whole thing can be a mess.

For example posts made by sales people on social media platforms could easily be seen by other prospects searching on a company name and that could inform the marketing and those two, therefore, have to be completely joined up. Sales people today in some ways have become mini marketers and much of their prospecting is going to be done on line, and they need content in order to build credibility and give value to their clientele and they need support from the marketing department in order to help them to achieve this.

Meanwhile marketing can no longer work on a standalone piece of literature such as a brochure many years ago. Today, a Web site is seen in a combination of LinkedIn profiles, sales messages and customer comments and, therefore, marketing has to take into account an overall strategy and message and how that affects the company’s reputation.

While marketing should have always been aware of the work he was doing and how that would lead to an optimal purchase, this didn’t always happen in business to business organisations. Today this can no longer be the case. Marketing has to become much more sales savvy and understand the purchase journey and how what it does it will contribute to the final sale.

Meanwhile, sales people can no longer just dismiss marketing thinking that they are doing the real work, making calls and going to see customers and the marketing doesn’t matter. Web sites, social media, blogs, vlogs and other materials are really influencing purchasing decisions today and, therefore, salespeople have to be much more marketing savvy and work with the marketing department in order to make sure these materials are appropriate.

Ultimately while sales and marketing are two different disciplines, they can no longer afford to work out of two different offices in separate parts of the corridor.

Today they have to be working out of the same office so they can collaborate and communicate extensively to make sure they get the best out of each other.

There may be small changes to the spoken word in this transcript in order to facilitate the readability of the written English

Rate this:

Comments

  1. Right to the crux of the matter Grant – again. Find so many companies stuggle with this breakdown of old fashioned silo thinking

Leave a Comment