I hold the Marketing truths of new media, content marketing and demand generation to be self-evident, that the benefit for all sales teams are created equal. Bunk.
Now that I have Marketer’s blood pressure up, let me explain. I have written in the past on the innovation of Marketing in recent years. Demand Generation, Social, Content Marketing and the like have really pushed the customer experience in a positive way much of the time. Marketers, however, lament the lack of engagement from the salesforce as a primary reason these things aren’t working even better. I mean, how could they not get the value of inbound marketing to their overall productivity as a salesperson?
On the other side, most salespeople don’t get their own marketing teams at all. They think you are creating a bunch of pretty pictures and flowery messages that don’t help them sell all that much. Leads, yeah right. “I know my market, just give me a flyer”.
The reality is both sides are wrong. But the hard truth for Marketers is that salespeople have walked further in your shoes than you have in theirs. And that is a bigger deal than you think. Sales is really tough. Lots of rejection and successful or even mediocre reps have found a way to include a wide variety of activities that help them introduce their value to the market. Many of those things are “marketing”. Maybe watered down a bit, but maybe it’s their own database research, personalized email effort, events and calling for the appointment. They are doing marketing, but just how much are the marketer’s experienced in the selling? Hmm.
Most have never stood face to face with a customer asking for a piece of business. Most have never stared at a CRM database figuring out where to go next. Most have never felt the challenge and rejection of a day on the phones (and yes for the arrogant and clueless marketers out there, that’s even when provided all your great leads). Most have never felt the high of the closed deal or the crushing disappointment of the lost deal you knew you had. This is a big problem.
I think the path to becoming a strategic marketing professional in most companies is wrong. First, I believe in order to be a great strategic marketing partner to sales, you need to have the blood and scars of carrying the bag. (And Marketer’s if you don’t understand that vernacular, it illustrates the point). There is no substitute for that experience, ever. Where that is not possible or even if it is, Marketers should have to spend exhaustive time on sales calls. Get your butt out of the tower and witness first-hand how your company really goes to market. You’ll be enlighted, shocked and overflowing with ideas.
I promise by taking this approach it will change, and improve drastically, the efficacy of your marketing effort. And by the transitive property, perform magically delicious things for the interconnection between sales and marketing. True synergies happen when people connect to other people’s struggles, empathize and ideate how they can add value to one another.
If Marketer’s do a better job walking a mile in salespeople’s shoes, you’ll reel in the gap between you and them and do more deals along the way. At Sawbux, we crazy enough to think marketing and sales are the same thing. If you ever wanna chat about it, give us a holler.