COMMENTS
Marketing creates pieces, campaigns, and glittering, glowing, flowering, nice nice things. Sales create opportunity when there was none.
Marketing lets' people know who has what when they get ready to buy something. Sales create opportunity and causes people to buy.
Marketing cares more about leads for two reasons:
1. Leads are the only segment of the sales process they can take responsibility for. Low conversion rates can be blamed on sales.
2. Salespeople, in most cases, are fed up with the low quality leads marketing generates and consequently care-less. Lead generation may be sales number one complaint.
David Brock wrote a fabulous article about putting marketing on commission, which I have been a believer in for over 30 years. Without a vested interest in the end result, most marketing departments create stuff that looks good that sells appointments, not products and services.
Out of all the articles I have read from this blog, this is one that I am most disappointed in. There is a certain naïveté by trying to pit one department over the other. Marketing is sales, sales is marketing - it is the process of promoting and selling and distributing a product or service. Why would anyone treat marketing and sales like two different disciplines’? If they are they are missing huge opportunties to grow their company.
The Customer – Dave's thinking was that sales cares more, because sales, not marketing is hearing those opinions directly. I would say that marketing gets at least “equal” billing here. The classic “4 P’s” of marketing (product, price, place, promotion) are all tied to customers in some way, shape or form. I’ve always added a fifth “P”....People! One of the primary goals of a company’s marketing efforts is to build the brand—with people (customers!). I don’t think you can have good sales results without exceptional marketing efforts.
@Mike - Exactly! You were supposed to be disappointed...
In most companies, sales and marketing are completely disconnected where they should be integrated, working together, helping each other, adapting to each others requirements, sharing goals and more!
Thank you Mike for being the first to get it!
@Gary - thanks for letting us know about David Brock's article. Here's
the link to read it.
@Rocky - nice way to present the differences.
@Doc - Thanks for contributing to this discussion - putting the people into marketing is crucial!
In my experience in small high tech companies, there has not been a marketing department. In these situations, I have worked with ownership to make sure that my sales efforts and our marketing aspects, especially website and brand, match up.
Hi,
I read all your newsletters and specially appreciate the fact most of the ideas are based on studies.
In this case, more than discussing which cares most, I think what we should start to emphasize, is the need of team work from both departements.
Everyone knows how tense some relationships are in some companies between them, and how much good work is lost because of that.
Each in it's role, should share information and views and work together to achieve the goals.
And we all know that doesn't happen all the times. It's kind of a "war" indoors that doesn't make sense at all
Best regards
Paulo Soares
www.atitudevendedora.com