Sales and Marketing: Can’t We All Get Along?
Sales and marketing teams at B2B brands often struggle with alignment and collaboration. Find out how cultural differences and organizational practices are often behind these challenges and how to address them.
In my senior year of university, back in the paleozoic era, I remember going for a job interview arranged by our placement office. I didn’t get the job, but I’ve always remembered something my interviewer said to me.
“Marketing and sales never get along,” he said, apparently to enlighten me about life in the real world beyond academia. I remember finding that puzzling, because it contradicted everything I’d learned in business school, as well as common sense.
Looking back, I now have the perspective to judge that remark as a half-truth. Even so, it's the kind of claim that advertising pioneer David Ogilvy described as “the half of the truth that people aren’t seeing.”
Closely Related Functions, Often Misaligned in Practice
Although managers agree that marketing and sales are closely related functions, if not the same function, the fact remains they’re often misaligned in practice. In my experience, this often stems from cultural differences.
Marketers operate with a broader, more strategic focus. They use mass communication to raise brand awareness and interest early in the buyer’s journey.
Sales reps work face-to-face with prospective clients, using practical techniques to close deals. Their communication is direct and personalized, and they may roll their eyes at strategies that don’t deliver these kinds of results.
Organizations Practices Can Deepen Cultural Difference
B2B brands can inadvertently deepen these cultural differences through organizational practices. There can be a lack of information sharing and communication.
Roles and responsibilities throughout the buyer journey may be unclear causing major accounts to fall through the cracks. That can foster a blame game between the two teams, where finger pointing becomes a substitute for problem solving.
In some cases, the technology stacks that sales and marketing use may lack integration. This can happen because of the cultural differences we’ve discussed or because of mergers and acquisitions.
“What We Have Here Is a Failure to Communicate”
The good news is that if your B2B content marketing team is experiencing some frustration because of these misalignment issues, there are some practical solutions. Often, to quote the catch phrase from the film Cool Hand Luke, “What we have here is a failure to communicate.”
Your team can work to foster communication by holding joint meetings involving both sales and marketing. You can also sit in on one another’s team meetings to explain approaches and listen in on the pain points being raised.
Your company could implement cross-training programs where your team members take part in sales calls, while sales reps help produce B2B marketing content. This can help to blend and unify team mindsets.
Fine Tuning Your Brand’s Buyer Personas
A great way to bring sales and marketing closer together is to collaborate on developing or fine tuning your brand’s buyer personas. Your team may have pulled these together through statistical research, while your sales team can probably provide key insights from observing decision makers and influencers in their “natural habitat.”
Another approach is to ensure that the sales and marketing teams make a point of celebrating collaborative successes. At the same time, you could look for ways for both teams to provide constructive feedback on activities that haven’t gone as planned.
These kinds of collaborative solutions work best when brands align the leadership of sales and marketing. I support the school of thought that sales and marketing should report to the same executive.
Single VP of Sales or Chief Revenue Officer - Pros and Cons
I believe that B2B companies with a single VP of Sales and Marketing or Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) have more success aligning staff and sharing strategies. Having one boss encourages communication and collaboration, and it also promotes quicker decision making.
Lots of people disagree with me. They believe the cultural differences between sales and marketing arise from genuine differences in skill sets and priorities.
Separate leadership proponents believe these different priorities can lead to conflicts of interest, where a single leader may lack the perspective to consider both teams' needs objectively. They also argue that having two leaders aligns accountability with those distinct team priorities.
Alignment Depends on Trust More Than Structure
In the end, alignment depends more on trust and goodwill than boxes on an organization chart. Regardless of whether we have one or two leaders on the executive team, alignment flows from the top down.
Removing the obstacles to sales and marketing alignment requires authority. To achieve it, your brand’s leaders need to foster more open communication and ensure marketing strategies align with sales techniques in the field.
Those at the top also need to clearly define sales and marketing responsibilities. They should also ensure that the information technology the sales and marketing staff use is integrated in ways that make information sharing and collaboration easy.
Sales and Marketing Teams Share Common Goals
In the broadest sense, sales and marketing teams realize they share common goals. They want to attract and keep customers, build client relationships and drive your brand’s revenue.
Your challenge is to ensure that structures, tools and interactions align with those common goals in practice.
Learn more:
Better Together: The Importance of Aligning Sales and Marketing Teams Sales and Marketing Alignment Insights, Strategies and Success Indicators
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