Ending The War Between Sales And Marketing Marketing Essay

The subject of this article could be explained as the though collaboration between Sales and Marketing departments. Outsiders often confuse Sales with Marketing, and the other way around, while in fact these departments are completely different, which regularly causes conflicts between them. The authors of the article all agree that better cooperation between the departments would be very profitable for a company. To reach a better working-together, the company will have to go through a lot of phases that will not be finished in a some weeks. The results will reward the company anyway. A marginal comment for this article is that the evaluation is not necessary for every company.

Let’s start by mentioning the causes of the hard collaboration, to be followed by four different relationships that the Sales and Marketing departments can have. Afterwards, four ways to develop a better cooperation will be discussed. The article will be finished with the explanation of the Buying Funnel.

Causes

Roughly, there are two kinds of friction between the two departments: economic and cultural. Speaking about economic friction, we can point out the division of the total budget between Sales and Marketing, thanks to the following reasons. The Marketing department is under pressure because they need to achieve revenue goals, and want the Sale force to ‘Sell the price’ instead of ‘Selling through price’. This attitude makes it harder to sell the product, so Sales does not agree at all. Another economical cause of the problems is that Sales has the final say over transactional pricing. When special low pricing is needed, Marketing usually has no right for any input. The vice-president of Sales goes directly to the CFO, which irritates the Marketing department. Also the promotion costs are a point of discussion. They are considered far too high by the Sales department, even though the Marketing department needs to spend money to generate desire for a product. At last, Sales departments often complain that a new product being launched by marketers often lacks the desire of the customer.

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Cultural friction is probably even more profound than the economic friction. Cultural friction is caused by the fact that Marketing employees and Sales employees are usually completely different kind of people. Marketers are highly analytical, data oriented, and focused on projects while Sales employees spend their time talking to current and potential customers. Above that, the two groups’ performance is judged very differently. Sales people have the objective to close sales. It is easy to see which employees are successful. Marketing, in contrast, is a long-term project that is devoted to projects and not to people, which makes it really hard to measure their success.

Four types of relationships

The companies that have been studied, show four kinds of relationships between the Sales and Marketing departments. The relationships change as the companies’ Marketing and Sales functions age. However, the situation where the two departments are completely integrated, is still rare.

The four kinds of relationships are as followed:

Undefined

Defined

Aligned

Integrated

An undefined relationship means that the two departments have grown separately from each other. Each group doesn’t know from the other what he is up to, until a conflict arises. Meetings between the two are likely to be devoted to conflict resolution.

In a defined relationship, rules are set up, to avoid disputes between the departments. They are aware of the activities of the other department, partly thanks to the fact that meetings become more reflective. Sales and Marketing even start working together for large events like trade shows.

When the two departments have an aligned relationship, they are both more flexible, though they still have their boundaries. They cooperate in creating plans and trainings. The Sales department understands and uses marketing jargon, and Marketing deliberates with Sales on important accounts. Now they also play a role in transactional and commodity sales as well.

Finally, an integrated relationship can arise. At this moment, boundaries start disappearing. Both departments redesign the relationship to share structures, systems and rewards. Marketing begins to focus on strategic, forward-thinking types of tasks and is sometimes divided into upstream and downstream groups. Upstream Marketers engage in customer sensing: they observe the voice of the customer and develop a long view of the company’s business external environment. Downstream marketers develop advertising and promotion campaigns, collateral material, case histories, and sales tools. They help Sales people to develop and select leads.

Moving up

Inside a company it is possible to go through the different stages of relationships. When a relationship evaluates from undefined to defined, managers need to create clear rules of engagement, including handoff points for important tasks like following up on sales leads. In a small company it’s possible that Marketing and Sales have good relationships that needn’t be disturbed. A regular reason of friction in this stage is the competition for scarce resources and the fact that their respective roles that are to vaguely formulated.

When the departments want to evaluate from defined to aligned, the disciplined communication should be improved. Personnel should always know where to go in case of a problem. Joint assignments need to be created. This creates opportunities for the departments to work together. Above this, they should appoint a liaison from Marketing to work with the Sales force. He or she helps to resolve conflicts and shares with each group the knowledge of the other group.

At last, it’s important to collocate Marketing and Sales employees. When people are physically close, there will be more interaction and they will better work together.

After these changes it is possible to evaluate the relationship to integrated. However, most companies will already function good enough in the phase of an aligned relationship. In complicated or quickly changing situations, there are good reasons to move Sales and Marketing into an integrated relationship. This means integrating straightforward activities. They should also Appoint a chief revenue (or customer) officer. The main reason to integrate Sales and Marketing is that the two functions have the same goal: the development of profit and increasing revenue.

The Buying Funnel

There’s a popular, well-known view that Marketing should take responsibility for the first four steps of the buying funnel. This division of tasks makes Marketing focus on strategic activities and prevents the group from interference in individual sales opportunities. The Sales department is responsible for the last four steps of the funnel. Sales normally develops

its own funnel for the selling activities that happen during the first two steps.

Critical Review

The writers of this article try to convince the reader and companies that it will increase the profit of a company when the Sales and Marketing departments work together. Maybe more important is that they give an extensive explication of the difference between the two departments. They inform the reader by describing the four different stages of a relationship, raised from an investigation of many companies. That what the writers are saying, seems very convincing to me. Since they explain step by step what companies should do to improve relationships it all stays very clear and logic. The biggest advantage of this article for me, is that it shows the biggest different between Marketing and Sales, because I always had problems explaining it myself.