Sales and Marketing: Can’t We Just Get Along?

When I was a marketing director at Brunswick’s boat group, a consultant made a very prescient point about the difference between sales and marketing.      

“The difference,” he pointed out, “is that the timing of the priorities is not the same.   Sales people are concerned with today’s quota, next week’s sales calls—things on the immediate horizon.   Marketing people are more geared to longer term goals—building a brand, market penetration, and the like. Until those differences are reconciled, there will always be inherent friction between sales and marketing.”

This was a consultant worth his $300 an hour.

In my career I’ve witnessed the chasm between sales and marketing and seen the detriment it can create in an organization.    In the instance of a wireless company client, the heads of sales and marketing only shared a mutual hate, and would do anything to subvert each other.  As a result, the company was slow to react to competitive pressures in product development and price promotions and suffered a series of avoidable stumbles.

I am blessed by the fact I work with probably the best sales director I’ve ever known in my career—Jana Carpenter.  She knows enough about marketing to be dangerous, and to call BS on me if I’m off track.  (Which, of course, rarely happens).  Jana brings a very strategic approach to sales, which places her above most other of her tactics- driven sales contemporaries.  And best of all, she and I work seamlessly, with the appreciation and understanding that our ultimate goals are the same (to drive revenue) and that the marketing function and the sales function are complementary extensions of each other.    I’ve often described the dynamic in the context of a battle—that marketing is the air cover, and sales is the infantry.   You’ve got to soften the beach before the troops land on it.  And like in battle, it’s a matter of timing, coordination, and cooperation.

A few years ago Jana and I collaborated on an article on this topic, and created a diagnostic tool for companies to gauge the alignment of their sales and marketing teams.   If you’d like a copy of it, I can send you an electronic version. Post a note on this blog or reach out to me at bill.penczak@gmail.com, and I’ll send you a copy.

The discussion question this time is, “What are the prerequisites for successful collaboration between sales and marketing?”   And the tangential question is, “Should the sales and marketing functions be separate and equal roles, or should one person carry responsibility for both?”

Discuss among yourselves.