I was recently asked this question:
Marketing Approach or the Sales Approach? Which one has worked for you in specific situations and why?
Pretty broad question!
B to B vs B to C? Internet Play or Relationship selling? Marketing and Sales play different roles in all of these environments. Internet Play there is a strong lean towards great marketing and an automated sales engine. Relationship selling requires feet on the ground to press the flesh i.e. sales calls and trade shows, usually a complex sale of a product or service. B to C is event and retail focused and usually has a short shelf cycle. vs B to B which can have a very long sales and marketing cycles.
Marketing and Sales must have line of sight to the objective. Measuring marketing results which drive sales leads which then drive revenue. Most companies are lacking in this clear line of sight to ROI. Many organization have a marketing silo and a sales silo and never shall the two meet.
The excuses are usually along the lines of:
Marketing develops leads for the sales organization. Sales hates the leads they get from marketing as they are not qualified. The statistics indicate that only 3% of leads from marketing actualize into closed business. This is a terrible waste of time.
There are ways to fix this but require significant corporate cultural changes. Any retooling should start in the C-Suite with agreement that change to develop line-of-sight system objectives be created in an overall re-branding of the organization. This will create the cultural changes required and allow for the human capital engagement to create and deploy such corporate wide solutions.
This will result in greater accountability from marketing expenditures and an increased sales results.
Peter Wann
http://www.measurablemarketingnow.com
