Why the Interface between Sales and Marketing Matters and What We Will Do About It
Sheila and Brandon, the Chief Marketing Officer and Sales Director respectively, of the Generic Drugs Division of Sunshine Inc., a leading pharmaceutical firm in the United States, are both new to their jobs. Generic Drugs had a big organizational shake-up in April 2014 and Sheila and Brandon were brought in by the company CEO 6 and 8 weeks ago respectively, to lead their marketing and sales teams. Generic Drugs was getting ready for rolling out a new product in early 2015 and the first task for Sheila and Brandon was to develop strategic plans for 2015 for Generic Drugs. Because they had not personally met with everyone in their field sales organization, they decide to call a meeting of the entire sales and marketing group at their headquarters in Lincoln, Nebraska.
At that meeting, there are approximately 70 people—10 from the marketing group and 60 from the entire sales organization. After Sheila and Brandon make introductory remarks, they open the floor up for an in-depth conversation about the upcoming product launch and to seek suggestions from the group about how to best strategize for the launch. Also on the agenda for the morning is an open conversation forum to discuss the strategic challenges their division faced in the recent past and develop joint action plans to tackle the challenges and capitalize on opportunities going forward.
After they set the stage with their opening remarks, it is the sales and marketing people’s turn to participate in the conversation. Sheila and Brandon are aware of the strategic challenges ahead of their division and they are looking forward to an open, fruitful dialog around the issues involved. To their dismay, as soon as they turn the floor over to the audience, the mood in the room turns frosty. No one from either sales or marketing groups really seems willing to participate in an open conversation. Being new to the company and not really knowing the people in the room well, it is difficult for Sheila and Brandon to gauge what people are thinking. To initiate the conversation, they ask a few questions, which are met with simple one-line answers from the audience. It is very evident that the people in the room are not forthcoming. This goes on for about a half hour and it is very uncomfortable for everyone. Both Sheila and Brandon realize that something is wrong and the meeting will not move forward this way. They stand up and urge people to let their guard down and open up. They tell the group that irrespective of what happened in the past, everything is on the table and that people should not hold back any issues that need to be addressed—big or small. They also emphasize that they are there simply to listen and learn. In sum, they build a great degree of safety in the environment so that people will open up.
And they do. All of a sudden, the mood in the room changes. What follows is almost 45 minutes of sales and marketing personnel openly griping about each other. They cite numerous instances where each function feels that they were let down by the other. They share experiences where promises were broken, communication loops were not closed, and marketing (and sales) department activities were counterproductive to one another. The list of complaints is long. The sense of animosity, frustration, dejection, anger, and antagonism between sales and marketing personnel is palpable. Sheila and Brandon realize that the functions have no respect for their counterparts and for the entire 45 minutes it feels like they are talking past each other, without even pausing once to listen to what the other function has to say.
It is a very disturbing feeling that they will be leading sales and marketing teams that share such poor rapport. Both of them came from companies where these teams were very cooperative and they have witnessed first-hand how their previous companies benefited from it. They know that what they see in the room that morning is more commonplace than exception. More importantly, they realize that it is symptomatic of the deeper-level problem areas between the sales and marketing organizations that have never been addressed by previous sales and marketing leadership or, for that matter, the CEO who hired them both. They also know how crucial it is for them to get their sales and marketing teams on the same page if they are to move their division forward both in the short and the long term. They know that they have their work cut out for them.
This story, which is based on true events but with fictional characters and company name, will sound familiar to many readers. If you occupy a C-suite in your company, you have probably heard or experienced the rumblings within the sales and marketing groups in your company and you know how crucial it is to get your sales and marketing teams on the same page for strategic and tactical success. It is likely that harmonizing the interface between sales and marketing functions in your company has been one of your top strategic priorities.
If you lead the sales or marketing organization in your company, you may have faced similar situations as the one described and looked for answers. It is likely that you witnessed different symptoms and manifestations of sales–marketing discord within your company. But you probably realize that they emanate from a set of deep-rooted, core problem areas between the sales and marketing organizations.
If you are a sales or marketing professional, you perhaps feel that we have told your story here. Once again, the nature and intensity of symptoms may be different in your specific situation. But you are probably living this situation every day in your professional life and you struggle to understand if there is a way to improve the relationship between your sales and marketing groups.
If you are a corporate Human Resources (HR) executive you may have heard complaints about the discord between the sales and marketing groups in your company for a while now. Your CEO probably asked you to look into this issue and assess whether anything can be done from an HR perspective to tackle this problem. You are now at a point where you want to take a closer look at this problem area, understand the issues involved, and find out what the best way is for you to bring these functions together so that they deliver the best value proposition to your customers and enhance the overall performance to your company.
If you are a student of business, within or outside of a university setting, you may have heard the stories and examples of how sales and marketing teams often fail to get along with one another. You are intrigued by this issue and you simply want to learn more.
This book is for each and every one of you.
To our knowledge, this is the first and only book that offers a comprehensive perspective on the functioning of the sales–marketing interface in B2B organizations; that explains the all too often problematic nature of this interface, why it matters to companies large and small, and what can be done about it. This book is based on extensive scientific research studies conducted by the authors, involving in-depth interviews and focus groups with hundreds of sales and marketing executives from a variety of industries across North America and the European Union. Everything written in this book is backed up by scientific research and the examples provided are based on real-life experiences of real companies, albeit with fictitious names. The book describes the perspectives of sales and marketing individuals across all levels within the sales and marketing hierarchy.
You have probably read about problematic sales–marketing interfaces in various business publications. You may also have attended half or full day seminars or breakfast conversations on this topic where the presenters offered quick solutions to fix this problematic interface in your company. Based on our extensive experience in this area, we know that such quick solutions do not necessarily apply to your situation, unless (1) you go to the root of the matter to understand what gave rise to the problems, (2) identify how the problems affect your strategic and tactical activities, and (3) understand what you can do about it. Without such an in-depth perspective, implementing the “fixes” you may have heard about within your company is akin to putting a Band-Aid on a wound that you do not know much about in terms of what caused it, how deep and serious it is, and (if left untreated at the root) how dangerous it will be.
In today’s fast-paced world it is tempting to look for quick fixes and believe that they actually work. However, we are convinced that such quick fixes to improve the workings within your sales–marketing interface will not solve your problem because they do not account for your specific corporate context or industry setting. The stakes are simply too high, from both strategic and tactical standpoints, to not pause and take a systematic approach to understanding the nuances within your sales and marketing interface dynamic in an effort to make their workings more effective.
In this book, we provide you precisely that: A comprehensive framework to assess and better understand your sales–marketing interface. We aim to provide you with detailed knowledge in each of the areas to prepare you for customizing the information to your specific setting. We want to help you improve the functioning of the sales–marketing interface within your company so that you continue to offer cutting-edge, innovative solutions to your customers and maintain a competitive advantage in the marketplace.
In the first chapter, we outline how the roles of sales and marketing have evolved in recent years and how, depending on the environments companies find themselves in, they may organize their sales and marketing departments differently. This chapter emphasizes the reality in today’s businesses that sales and marketing activities can no longer be considered independent activities that meet at the point where the company implements strategy; rather, they are interdependent from the get-go and their joint contribution is crucial for a company’s ability to develop, deliver, and communicate a superior customer value proposition.
Even though sales and marketing groups must move in lockstep, we see myriads of instances where sales and marketing fail to align their perspectives and work processes, and behave independently at different times. In Chapter 2, we present three real-life stories that illustrate how sales and marketing fail to work together and discuss how such failure may have significant negative implications for your company’s strategy development and implementation activities. Each of the stories draws extensively on what we have seen happening in real companies and may resonate with many of our readers.
Is the idea of moving in lockstep too difficult to understand? Or is it too difficult to implement? What prevents sales and marketing from being on the same page all the time, even when they are fully aware of what is at stake? Chapter 3 takes a more detailed look under the hood of the sales–marketing interface by presenting the various problems that may occur in sales–marketing interfaces, which make it harder for sales and marketing functions to remain on the same page all the time. This chapter also discusses a range of underlying causes to which the various interface problems may be traced.
Having given our readers a detailed look at what ails the sales–marketing interface, we move to thinking about solutions to these problems in Chapter 4. The focus of this chapter is on helping the reader to understand how companies may handle this challenging interface. We identify implementable solutions at three different levels—the level of each function, the level of the interface, and the company level—and illustrate how these solutions may be implemented in real-life situations.
By the time you complete reading Chapter 4, you will be familiar with the importance of sales–marketing interdependence, how it fails at various stages in key strategic processes, what the underlying reasons behind these failures are, and what may be done about it. This serves as a repository of knowledge for you to draw upon as you navigate the “treacherous” sales and marketing landscape within your company. But at this point you still lack the diagnostic tools that allow you to assess the health of your sales–marketing interface in detail, as well as its subsequent effects on your company’s strategic and tactical activities. This is where Chapter 5 offers help—we present you with a toolkit, containing all the tools you need to do exactly that.
Finally, Chapter 6 places the sales–marketing interface in a broader business environmental context by discussing a number of challenges that companies have to handle on a day-to-day basis and how they may impact their sales–marketing interfaces. This chapter brings forth the inherent characteristics of strong sales–marketing interfaces that are able to withstand the challenges and emerge stronger from them. We also outline specific interventional strategies that may help in this regard.
Throughout the writing of this book, our focus has been to not offer any quick fixes but help our readers gain a deeper perspective into this area. While this book is the result of years of extensive scientific research, we have translated what we have learned into insights that are easily implemented in practice.
The story presented in this book boils down to the observation that sales and marketing are two interdependent functions that need to move in sync, day after day, at strategic and tactical levels. And in today’s fast-moving business world, moving slowly will no longer cut it; sales and marketing need to learn to run in lockstep.
Let’s start running …