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Sales is From Venus, Marketing is from Mars

March 16, 2009

Recently I’ve had the pleasure of working with Jonathan Klein, Founder and General Partner at Topline Strategy Group. Here is an article he wrote on the topic of sales and marketing alignment and the importance of fact-based decision making:

SALES IS FROM VENUS, MARKETING IS FROM MARS

By finding common ground, sales and marketing can join forces to drive growth to new levels.

Like it or not, marketing and sales departments are stuck with each other. Relationships are not just for customers. Knowing how to build and maintain successful interdepartmental relationships, such as between sales and marketing, is critical to overall corporate success.

Successful companies have clearly defined their target markets and aligned their sales and marketing efforts to fulfill the needs of those markets. When done well, sales discovers they have a compelling value proposition, a competitively advantaged offering, and the marketing support to make deals close faster. When done poorly, sales learns quickly that closing business is a much harder task.

TWO DIFFERENT VIEWS
Unfortunately, aligning sales and marketing around the same target is not an easy task. The irreconcilable fact is that sales and marketing are different. At its core, sales thinks of customers as individuals. They win accounts one at a time, by serving each of their customer’s unique needs. The sales department’s concerns are centered on how it can close more business within the limits of its territory.

Marketing, on the other hand, thinks about customer segments and the best way to capture that segment. When the priorities of an individual deal clash with the priorities of the segment (which they often do), watch out, because sparks will fly. If sales and marketing have a strong relationship, they can resolve these differences. If they don’t, these differences will send sales and marketing in separate directions, hurting the company’s performance.

How do two different entities of the corporate world make their relationship work? Here are some of the secrets:

  1. WALK IN THE OTHER PERSON’S SHOES
  2. AGREE ON A COMMON PLAN
  3. MAKE FACT-BASED DECISIONS
  4. BUILD A CHANGE MANAGEMENT PROCESS


1. Walk in the Other Person’s Shoes

It’s not surprising that some of the best marketing people have spent time in sales and vice versa. Listen up marketing, it’s hard to understand the pressure sales is under unless you’ve sat in the lobby of a key prospect on the last day of the quarter waiting for the purchase order to make your quota. And sales, if you’ve ever tried to put together an ad campaign that conveys your message, captivates customers, and gets praise from your company’s employees, you know that it is no walk in the park.

If you reside in marketing’s corner, discover life on the other side. Short of taking a sales rotation, spend time with the telesales group for a day and make a few cold calls to see what works and what doesn’t. Or shadow a sales rep through an entire sales cycle, from the first call to signing the papers. You’ll learn firsthand what it really takes to get a deal done. For those of you pounding the street, next time you think you are missing a vital piece of collateral to support your deal, try working directly with marketing to create it. Or, take an existing ad or direct mail piece and sit down with the marketing folks who created it and discuss together what works and what doesn’t.

Really understanding what drives the other makes it easier to make the compromises required to build a successful relationship.

2. Agree on a Common Plan

Successful companies start by first clearly defining their target customer and then developing an integrated sales, product, and communications plan to attack and win those customers. If sales and marketing are not focused on the same target, or if they have different views of what is required to win deals, there will inevitably be friction. Typically, this manifests itself in commonly voiced criticisms: “marketing isn’t giving us what we need,” or, “sales is going after the wrong customers.”

Getting real buy-in from both sales and marketing up front is vital to the plan’s ultimate success. This contributes to a culture of cooperation instead of finger pointing when things go off track. To maximize your chances of building mutual buy in, have sales and marketing work together on developing the plan at all levels of the organization. This process will demands compromise and cooperation. Coming from different vantage points and often having different measures for personal success, sales and marketing will not always agree on who the target is and what steps are required to win those customers. And it is here, having walking in each other’s shoes (if only briefly), that a winning scenario for everyone is built.

3) Make Fact-Based Decisions

While building a common plan is a great objective, it must also be the “the right plan.” Its development is determined through quantifiable data about customer needs, customer behavior, and competitive capabilities. If you have one sales person and one marketing person in the room, you’ll probably have three opinions about what the company should do to close more business. It is necessary to get beyond opinions and get down to facts so you address issues in a way that will deliver results.

4) Build a Change Management Process

Sales and marketing plans are often obsolete as soon as the ink dries. Customers’ needs and market conditions change and competitors move in unexpected directions. Having sales and marketing develop integrated plans based on facts is not enough; it is also necessary to build an effective change management process.

One method borrowed from the operations department that works well is to establish a Change Control Board. In operations, a Change Control Board typically meets weekly to review the current state of affairs and make adjustments to its plans as necessary.

One way to apply this to sales and marketing is to add a marketing review to the sales pipeline meeting once every other week or once a month. At the meeting, the teams can give updates on progress, share experience from the field, and resolve issues. Just as facts are important in setting the plan, they are also critical to making adjustments. In operations, members of the Change Control Board are charged with assignments to bring data to the table to support decision-making. The same standard should be true for sales and marketing.

In the end, while sales is from Venus and marketing from Mars, it is possible to make this relationship work. It is not easy, but the benefits are something that both sides can readily agree on, faster growth and higher profits.

Jonathan Klein is Founder & General Partner of The Topline Strategy Group. The Topline Strategy Group is a strategy consulting firm specializing in high tech products and services. Their engagements provide clients with deep insights into their markets and customers and deliver practical recommendations for turning those insights into new sales. As a result of our work, our clients have captured tens of millions of dollars in additional revenue.

Written by dcunningham · Filed Under Features 

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Comments

One Response to “Sales is From Venus, Marketing is from Mars”

  1. Cheryl on August 1st, 2009 9:28 am

    This is great! I liked your article, I have tried many times to explain the difference between marketing and sales to my friends but they have always thought of them as one entity. Salesforce is a great CRM tool that can combine both efforts of marketing and sales. It makes it easier not struggle against each other.
    Thanks for the insight on this and think I’m going to be sending this article to my friends!

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