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Eleven Ways To Minimize Conflict Between Sales and MarketingThere is always a tension between the sales and marketing departments. Marketing people may think sales people don’t sell enough or work hard enough or have enough reporting structure. Sales people may think that marketing does not understand their customers, not supply enough new products for them to talk about, does not supply effective collateral material, and make too many demands on them on the CRM database.Some tension might be good for an organization, but too much can be destructive. A hostile relationship between the two departments will reduce the bottom line?that cost companies around $1 trillion per year, as cited by Salesforce. Some of this conflict can be reduced when there is a Vice President of Sales & Marketing, but many companies have separate Vice Presidents of Sales and Marketing.Based on 35 years in working with companies, here are some ways to reduce/minimize some of the conflict.RECOGNIZE THE DIFFERENCES IN PERSONALITY: According to Harvard Business Review, sales and marketing people have different personalities. Sales people are more relationship oriented and tend to be more right brained, more holistic. What is best for their customer? Marketing tends to be more left brained/analytical. Sales people look for buying signals and how to get the sale to the next level. Marketing tends to be more process oriented, what are the milestones that need to be hit in a process? Sales is usually (although not always) more extroverted personality. One is not better than the other, just different. Recognize and be flexible when dealing with another type of MUNICATION: There needs to be frequent communication between these two functions. We recommend every two to three months to have a communication forum. Marketing can talk about what products are in the pipeline, what they feel the target customer is, their marketing efforts and programs. They can share findings from research. Sales can talk about support they need to be more effective. How can marketing help the salesforce sell more?COLLATERAL MATERIAL: A frequent complaint is that the collateral material is not effective. Most of the time there is a sales meeting and the new material is then handed out. Why not have some of the sales people work with marketing. What do they need? Involve them in the process.NEW PRODUCTS: A frequent occurrence is to keep the salesforce in the dark, then show the sales force the new products at the sales meeting. Marketing should keep the sales people informed of what is in the NPD pipeline. More than that, they should be an input into the process. What features are needed? What would help customers? Is the product too complicated? Before you fall off your chair, this is one input not a veto process. The major driving input is input from customers and prospects through some type of voice of the customer research.SHARED COMPENSATION: If a company has a target for speed of market entry and/or sales targets for new products, think about having some type of bonus system to reward the extended team of both sales and marketing. After all, the company is the true winner.CRM DATABASE DEVELOPMENT: Marketing wants the information the salespeople have on their personal database. Salespeople sometimes think this is their property (it is not). As marketing develops a CRM database, salespeople should be involved in having some fields that they feel that are important. Examples could be fields that allow for the last discussion, the birthday of the decision maker etc. Before the CRM is final and fully rolled out, it should be field tested by some of the reps. Is the product helping the sales people do their jobs? Is it easy to use? WORK WITH SENIOR MANAGEMENT TO ESTABLISH ATTAINABLE SALES QUOTAS: When sales people do not meet their quota, they automatically assume the quota was unrealistic. Quotas are normally set by taking last year, bumping it up and then setting a stretch quota. A better way is to use a territory share approach. Who is a better sales rep, a rep who sells $1 million or a rep who sells $1.5 million? The answer is the obvious, right? It is the rep who sells $1.5 million? Maybe, maybe not. What if I told you the rep who sold $1 million covered Wyoming and Montana with a territory potential of $2 million or has a 50% territory market share. The rep selling $1.5 million covered the States of New York and New Jersey where the territory potential was $15 million or had a 10% territory market share. Then the Wyoming Rep was outperforming his counterpart by a factor of five times!Effective companies use potential markets and use territory shares to measure the effectiveness and reward the reps. The US is analyzed through secondary and industry research for a total potential market. The potential for a territory can be determined through a chain ratio like purchases per employee times the number of employees in the territory. Other factors could be used like the number of electrical contractors, the number of new commercial feet etc. Mapping software which uses these factors and overlays to your sales territories is a great visual tool. LEAD QUALIFICATION: Now the following is going to make some of my sales colleagues and sales consultants upset. I keep hearing, hard work yields results. Make cold calls. Build a funnel. I grew up being successful, so my salespeople should do the same.Here is an example. The firm goes to a major trade show, and has a couple of hundred of sales leads from people stopping by the booth. They then are handed out to the sales force to follow up. What happens is that many leads are not followed up and marketing is blamed.The average amount of face to face selling time is 25%. The balance is windshield time, filing out call reports, database, training etc. What is one of the most valuable assets a firm has? It is the getting the sales person in front of the right decision maker. What if I told you, there is a way to raise this face to face selling time to 50%. This would be like doubling your salesforce without doubling the expense side.We are strong proponents of using a lead qualification process before the lead is handed to the sales force. The suspect becomes a prospect. This can be done through inside sales or an outside lead generation firm. The marketing ROI will be better with a smart process. Current paradigms from middle and senior management are the major hurdles in this process. Until this changes, this will still be the minority.DON’T ASSIGN BLAME WHEN SOMETHING GOES WRONG: When a new product fails, the sales people are the first to be blamed. Maybe the product lacked critical features. Maybe it was too complicated to use. Maybe it was substantially higher proceed than the competition. Don’t react emotionally. Determine what the issue was, and determine how to solve it.LESS SILOS: Use cross functional teams on key initiatives like new products etc. Have marketing occasionally go out to visit customers with the salesperson. Marketers need to continue to work on segmenting the market, develop new products, make prospects aware of the product, communicate the benefits, target new markets and applications etc. But they should also spend part of their time helping the sales people. Assign one or a few dedicated marketing resources to channel communications from the sales and marketing departments. Build some social settings as a place to get to know each other.CELEBRATE SUCCESS: Celebrate successes and praise all the team players working as a team.To see how Consight Marketing? group can work with your company to achieve its marketing objectives, call Alan Hale at 847.800.1685 or email at: alan.hale@. For more information, to rread our blog or download white papers, visit our website: . ................
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