A Marketing Guy’s Thoughts on What I’ve Learned About Working with Sales

August 1, 2008 | Posted by: Charles Gold

Why do software companies have marketing departments? When I meet prospective employees, I like to ask some variant of this question. The answer is usually pretty telling about the candidate. While I've heard some, er, interesting responses, most marketers will say something about helping to increase revenue.

But what does this really mean? Functionally, marketers can help increase revenue through developing great strategy, building market awareness, providing insightful competitive analysis, generating qualified leads, or communicating clear product differentiation. Clearly it's all of these things and many others.

But to my mind, creating a truly valuable marketing function means working closely with Sales. Contrary to the typical business school approach, revenue isn't a line item on a spreadsheet. It's the sum of the wins of hard fought street fights executed by your sales team. It's our job to put our sales teams in the position to win these fights quickly and decisively.

For what it's worth, here is what I've learned.

1. When considering a top marketing job, interview the top Sales executive and his or her management team. Understand how they think about Marketing, how they'd like to work with you, and how their organization works. No matter how good a marketer you are, you will fail if your counterparts in Sales aren't effective. I've been fortunate enough to work with some outstanding Sales professionals - and it's made all the difference.
2. Once you're aboard, get to know the Sales executives, directors, managers, and reps. It would be easy to just work with top sales management and let them represent the needs of their reps. This is necessary, but not sufficient to be successful. Go on calls with key reps, take time to listen to what they're hearing from customers, be clear about your priorities and plans and ask them for their feedback. You don't need to act on everything that's suggested, but if you don't listen, you'll miss a lot.
3. Build a sales driven culture in your marketing organization. Ask your team to think about how their decisions, plans, and programs will ultimately impact sales. Make this point regularly and reinforce it through your own actions.
4. Get on the same page about Sales priorities for marketing by being completely transparent. In my company, we maintain a ‘marketing plan of record' that tracks what the various marketing groups are working on along with delivery dates. This gives us a useful tool for discussing priorities with Sales management. If one of your sales directors wants a new competitive document, you can have a rational discussion about where it fits with existing priorities. You can also use this document to enable the Sales VP to help you load balance across the priorities suggested by his or her subordinates.
5. Jointly define measurement criteria. Clearly agree on key terms like what constitutes a "lead" or what would make any given lead "hot". Marketing and inside sales are both part of a process akin to manufacturing. We provide the raw material (leads), inside sales enriches it to build pipeline. If you don't agree on the definition of good raw materials, you are unlikely to get the desired result out of the factory. Once you have terms defined, create a dashboard in your salesforce automation system, and use it to jointly manage the process. If it's appropriate, publish the dashboard to all the relevant sales reps and marketing programs managers.  In his outstanding newsletter, The Taber Report, David Taber has written extensively about managing the lead process.
6. Accept that parts of your work are more likely to be valued more highly than others. For instance, most sales reps will value lead generation over PR or industry analyst relations. That does not mean that these activities won't ultimately help them to be successful or that they aren't critical. It just means that the line between A and B isn't as clearly understood. Without being defensive, have an open discussion about why you're doing what you do.
7. Use plain English. Always. Prospects rarely ask your reps for a "market beating end-to-end integration solution for the enterprise." Explain your product in clear terms that your reps will be able to use credibly with their prospects. This goes for presentations, press releases, whitepapers, and everything else.
8. Ask for feedback. Often. From all levels of Sales. Without being defensive.
9. Provide feedback. Sales and Marketing should be working towards the same goals, working from a well understood priority list, and using common metrics. All of this provides executive level marketers with the foundation to provide candid, constructive feedback to Sales leadership.
10. Maintain a regular dialogue with your sales counterpart. I talk to our VP of Sales most every day. I understand her world and she understands mine - warts and all. Our running dialogue makes it easier for us to support one another. It also makes conflicts easier because we both know that we're both coming from a place of respect and desire to do what's right for the business