The divide between marketing and sales…
Wednesday, October 27th, 2010
Have you ever noticed the gap that exists between most marketing departments and most sales departments? While they have common goals to increase the revenue of the organization, they’re almost two completely different silos. The fact is that the sales team is (or should be) considered as the internal client of the marketing team.
Unfortunately, many marketers, particularly in large corporations don’t have much empathy for sales people. They often see them as overpaid whiners, who work short hours and get big pay, entertaining clients on expense accounts. Conversely, sales people often see the marketing folks as being out of touch, self-serving and focused on all the wrong things. As in life, the truth always lies somewhere in the middle.
But the cold hard fact is that many marketers have never been in the sales trenches themselves. They’ve never carried a bag, they’ve never done cold calls, had a door slammed in their face and have never had to compete head to head with a competitor – let alone bump into them in the customer’s reception area.
So how can Frontier help? We go on “ride-alongs” with sales people, and have one-on-one conversations, which we record and later get transcribed. We learn about the salesperson’s background, their day to day routines, how they do what they do, and the frustrations they face everyday. We also get their feedback on what works and what doesn’t work “on the battlefield.” In addition, we go out and meet their customers, and talk with them as well. After we get a good cross-section of these conversations done, we compile all the information and knowledge we’ve gathered and sift through it to find the main trends, feedback and themes. We present our findings and recommendations via multimedia to the marketing department which puts a “face” on the sales people in the field, and also brings the “actual” voice of the customer into the room.
In many cases, things that appear to be important to the marketing department really matter very little to the sales people. More importantly, those things also often matter very little to the end customer, who is ultimately buying the company’s services.
There is a huge opportunity to help companies realize their goals when they are willing and able to bridge this gap between sales and marketing. Empathy from both sides and common understanding delivers great payback for both our clients and their customers – both internal and external.
Too often in this nascent industry called “service design,” practitioners, students, professors and pundits seem to love to endlessly debate the meaning of “service design.” Invariably, the definitions become long, complex and too abstract for most outsiders.
Over the past month, I’ve been doing a good bit of air travel and due to layovers, have had the opportunity to experience a number of airports in quick progression. These airports include Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles, Dallas, Miami and Key West.
Since I often refer to the famous quote, “the road to Hell is paved with good intentions” I was intrigued by an article in today’s Wall Street Journal entitled, “
We have a client who is looking to hire a Marketing Coordinator. This is an entry level position, ideal with for a recent graduate with a marketing degree or someone who has a few years experience in marketing. The company is based in a very cool space in Chester, PA on the waterfront and is a well established provider of niche software to both domestic and international markets. Would be responsible for presenting a unified message across multiple media platforms including: