Don’t isolate marketing from sales

An interesting debate erupted within earshot of me not that long ago. It happened so randomly I can’t even remember the location, setting, or time of day.

But I remember it involved some sales rep types, and some of the dialogue went like this …….

Those marketing people think they are the ‘ant’s pants’.

Yeah, exist in their bubble like us sales people don’t exist.

I agree, it’s like they are in some sort of trance that they wouldn’t dare ask us what we need or what we want.

For sure. As for those leads they get us, most of them are useless.

That’s right on the money; and if you try to question them they just don’t want to know because they are the marketing experts.

Ok, so the exchange comes across as mildly infantile and reeking of office politics, but essentially there is a rational point to the concerns of these sales people.

As contemporary marketers, we have a lot of new and emerging technology at our collective disposal. And so often we are so immersed in it, many in the profession cut links with one seriously critical circuit of successful business.

And that is: the sale is in effect the marketing.

What I mean by this is it’s not much good planning anything to do with marketing until you have a clear understanding of what the ideal model of a sale looks like to the actual salesperson.

I can illustrate it in a hypothetical scenario involving something as commonplace as retail shoes:

Your sales team has 75 retail outlets around Australia stocking men’s and women’s shoes that are all size 9. They are given six months to sell them off, so they brief you on their challenge, you put a plan in place and hit the start button so the system starts to market to the masses.

The only problem is you have set up a marketing system to attract anyone and everyone who wants shoes, regardless of the size of their foot.

You are delivering a huge amount of leads, but only about 6% of these leads are actually useful because they are the only ones with size 9 feet.

The sales team finds the majority of its time is being spent telling people attracted to your shop that they don’t actually have a product for their needs.

It’s a simple example, but it illustrates two important points:

1. The sale is actually part of the marketing
2. The sales team is the best to provide the buyer persona to which you should market (in this case ‘size 9 foot’ is the key element to which your marketing strategy should face).

Welcome to the modern day challenges of marketing and lead development. I always believe we can never lose sight of what Sales Directors and sales professionals actually sell because it’s into this that all marketing strategy (as well as tactics) will dovetail.

Nowadays, developing leads is way more complex than mere cold calling. We have interesting thoughts on the matter and are happy to share them. Please click to download a free e-book which will give you some insight on the subject.