With more and more of my role being solely focused on the Marketing strategy and goals of the company and the need (the requirement) to work directly with sales on what our message is and what is being relayed to the customer had my head spinning with ideas of the breakdown that these two people might be having:
- Perhaps they just have a personality conflict?
- Perhaps egos are in the way of the core purpose - to sell?
- Perhaps they are looking at the function of marketing differently?
I went on with my day, in that mode of getting things done and really didn't think about the morning conundrum again until I started walking back to the train and literally almost ran into the guy in the revolving door. Now I'll have to make confession - I followed him wanting to see if an opportunity to talk to him would make way. Well "we" (listen to me - we) stopped by the bar and got a drink. He decided on a beer and I got a wine then "we" headed over to the newsstand and thumbed through some magazines; then I turned and lost site of the guy - damn. So much for getting the chance to pick his brain and see if I could learn something from his experience.
I make my way to the third car of my train, up on the top level and to the left and I sit and sigh. As I start plugging everything in and tethering my iPhone (shh) the guy crawls over everyone on the row and sits right beside me. Fate!
I pull up Feedly and start catching up on my blogs and doing a little searching on marketing and sales communication and I run across a Marketing Interactions website. Low and behold I have a computer perv next to me. He said, "Are you in marketing? (Hallelujah). I explained to him my recent refocus back to marketing and brand strategy for the company that I work at. He then laid on me all of his issues with his marketing department. He ranted, raved and vented. The theme - customer transition.
When Marketing works with a customer in pre-sales at his company their Director of Marketing would give the potential customer a different story of what they do. The communication during the pre-sale stage (warming that lead) was not consistent and by the time the customer was transitioned to Sales they were becoming frustrated with the company and the process. As I was talking to the guy (Jason I found out later) I told him that this sounded to me like inconsistent messaging between Marketing & Sales. I asked him if they were loosing some of their leads after the Marketing phase and if Marketing was blaming Sales for not selling and Sales blaming Marketing for over selling their service. He stared at me like I was reading his mind.
As we were coming closer to my stop we had swapped business cards and a few of our war stories throughout our career's and I knew I had a new LinkedIn friend. I got off the train and started walking to my car, my mind still churning through all of the information that we had volleyed back and forth. I realized then and there how important it is even in appearance to the customer that Marketing and Sales are on the same team. So many times there is this wall between the two departments in any business. Either Marketing is seen as support instead of leading the sales efforts in their generation of leads or Sales is seen as the pavement hitters instead of the closers that they can be.
The fluid transition of a customer between Marketing and Sales seems so simple yet is imperative to the customer's perceived service level that they will receive after that contract has been signed. Such a small thing that can make such an impact to how many leads become customers in the end.