Ending the Cold War

If you’re lucky enough to be part of an organization where Sales and Marketing work together openly and collaboratively, you’re in the minority.

As a rule, Sales and Marketing are two camps that co-exist in a state of cold war. In the best cases, they tolerate one another. In the worst cases, the two don’t attend meetings together or communicate in any direct way. Instead, Sales blames Marketing for wasting their time with bad leads; and Marketing blames Sales for not being able to close the great leads they’re working so hard to produce.

Sound familiar?

Since these two departments have the same ultimate goal — i.e., to raise their brand’s value and generate more revenue — they should make natural allies. And in truly great organizations, they do. In progressive environments, the historic cold war between these two camps is melted when each realizes a critical point about the other:

Great marketers can identify and target your most-lucrative potential prospects, and communicate the value of your brand. Great salespeople know the needs and concerns of your customers better than anyone, and have the talent to transform interest and curiosity into revenue.

No matter what side of the fence you’re on, upon realizing these truths, you understand how critical each faction is to the other — and how important such a well-tuned collaboration can be to your organization.

To illustrate this type of progressive collaboration, we offer you The Next-Generation B2B Funnel:

> To get “Ending the Cold War” in its entirety, please visit IMA Post.

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Greg Ippolito is the founder and creative director at IMA. You can contact him at [email protected], or follow him at @gregippolitoima.