Communication between Sales & Marketing

Today’s post is cross-posted from the Revenue Roundtable.

**************************************************************************

Kevin’s post yesterday was spot on about Marketing with a capital "M" as the core of the business. At the root, the Marketing Plan is the Business Plan. The marketing team is simply a functional team responsible for carrying out actions that deliver to the business plan. And as Kevin points out, there are other functions also responsible for their part of the delivery:  sales, finance, operations, etc.

Quite frankly, I think the main reason we lose sight of the Marketing Plan being the Business Plan is fear that this gives too much organizational power to the marketing function.

But whatever the reason, it happens. Each of the separate but equal functions — sales, finance, marketing, operations, customer service — organize around their areas of responsibility and expertise into silos.  The measures of success of each function — lead volumes,  sales quotas, DSOs, call volumes etc etc.  – become their primary goals.  In the trenches, the teams lose sight of the macro orgainzational goals – Revenue and Profitability. And they lose sight of the fact that they are all on the same overall team, the company.

And worst of all, they stop talking TO each other, except in the executive suite, where organizational politics tends to hold sway, reducing the likelihood of actual meaningful exchanges of information.

So, if what we have here is a failure to communicate…. then what we need to do is start talking again. Easier said than done. It requires a deep organizational commitment and strong leadership to break down the barriers, eliminate politics and empire building, and reset everyone back to the shared business goals.

It is well beyond the scope of this post to provide a prescription for how to fix a broken organization. Every situation, every team  is different. One size does not fit all.

What I can do, however, is provide a simple suggestion on how to break down the barriers between the sales and marketing teams and get them more in sync with each other. It won’t fill in the sales and marketing chasm, but it will build a better bridge 🙂

Here goes.

The second most often heard complaint from sales reps (after #1, not enough leads) is that marketing never listens to all their good ideas for ads, direct mail campaigns etc. etc.

Marketing’s biggest complaint? That people are always telling them all their great ideas that would be so much better than what the marketing team has done/has planned. You know: everyone is an advertising expert 🙂

Net result: the marketing team tunes out everything from the sales reps, when instead it should be listening, filtering out the non-useful information, and using the data from the field to improve marketing programs. Remember the old cliche about advertising: I know 50 percent of my advertising works, I just don’t know which 50 percent. A similar rule applies to the feedback from sales teams: a good 50 percent is complaints and extraneous information. But buried in the bull is great information about what is actually happening in the field. We need to mine that information to improve marketing programs.

Here’s my recommendation: implement regular focus groups with the sales reps. You don’t have to do  expensive  "scientific" focus groups with third-party facilitators. A directed conversation facilitated by the marketing team can be just as (and sometimes more) productive, as it fosters conversation among the teams as well as delivering data. But.. the session has to follow fairly strict rules so it doesn’t degenerate into a  "bitch session."

You also have to go down to the rep level. I have found that sales managers don’t give the kind of unfiltered feedback about what is happening in the field that we need.

Here is a model that I have successfully used in the past:

– Once per quarter, within the first few weeks so as to not impinge on serious selling time, assemble a small group of sales reps. Rotate the groups quarter to quarter so you can get feedback from the largest number of reps possible. About 8 sales reps per session is a good number. Get buy-in and public commitment from the senior sales manager (VP, Director, whichever title is appropriate in your firm.) This ensures that the reps will participate and eliminates objections from line sales managers 🙂

– The session is one hour, with four directed questions, 15 minutes for each question.  The sales reps should clearly understand that the marketing team is NOT looking for their recommendations on the marketing plan, but rather feedback on specific questions which will be used to develop new marketing programs. This won’t prevent the reps from telling marketing what they should do, but it is clear warning that this is not the purpose of the session.

– The questions should be <strong>actionable </strong>. DO NOT ask about something that you will not be able to change, regardless of the sales and field feedback.

– Marketing managers are the facilitators. When marketing programs are attacked (and they will be), they can’t defend or get defensive. They have to soak up the feedback and deal with the negative offline from the focus group session. It is okay to be factual — if someone complains about something that has been or will shortly be changed, it is perfectly okay to share the factual information. Otherwise, the marketing guys need to stick with the program, and the four defined questions, and not get sidetracked into defending their record

– Sales managers and executives should NOT be present. Period. The results of the session can and should be shared, but the presence of the bosses will change the session. People will be worried about impressing the honchos, not giving unvarnished feedback. When the results are presented, the feedback must not be attributed.

– The results of the session, including any actions that will be taken as a result, should be shared with the sales participants as soon as possible. Once the sales reps believe that their feedback has made a difference in the marketing plan, the chasm will start to close.  They will start to buy-in, rather than complain. And the marketing team will be more open to the sales feedback. They will be better able to listen for the useful. The marketing programs will be better for it. And, over time, the relationship between your sales and marketing teams should improve.

If any of our readers decide to try this tactic, I would be happy to chat more about the model, just drop me a note. And I would most definitely love to hear your results.