Sales and Marketing that Work

Here is the truth most of us don’t want to hear: Without marketing and sales, there is no business. We don’t want to hear that, although most of us believe it, because performing marketing and sales tasks is scary. We have to communicate with other people. That’s what we do when we market our business and sell our products and services. Sometimes we do it by telephone (telemarketing). Sometimes we do it using mail (direct mail). Sometimes we use newspapers and magazines to tell our story (public relations). Sometimes we buy space in publications or online (advertising). And sometimes we use online tools (web sites, blogs, podcasts).

Marketing gets the word out about our business. It gets us noticed. It gets customers in our doors. It is the step that leads to sales, when a customer buys our products and services. If we don’t get noticed, and sell our products and services, there is no business.

Done the right way—with complete honesty and integrity—those who work in sales and marketing strive to increase happiness by making sure that the business creates products and deliver services that meet people’s needs. Everyone involved in the business should treat all people with respect and dignity, and talks with their current and potential customers, not at them. Versions of the truth are unacceptable. Communication is black or white and honest or dishonest. When done correctly, sales and marketing tasks are meant to educate, inform and reach out to certain people (our market) with news and information that people need to know about your business.

Here is the bottom line: Sales and marketing care about people and their needs and shares the information people need to make good choices in their lives. This is what we define as leading with the heart and creating happiness.

Think about it: If we are to manage a business for success, we have to create a business built around sales, marketing and innovation. In other words, sales, marketing and innovation are the most fundamental and most important tasks in our business. Every person in our business has some responsibility for sales and marketing results, and their pay should be tied to those results. It doesn’t matter whether or not the employee is in the accounting department or the marketing department. Every time we communicate with a customer, we are performing a marketing and a sales task.

CSO Insights' Sales Performance Optimization—2007 Survey Results and Analysis for the most current sales performance benchmarks provides data that tells us we are not doing great work in sales and marketing:

• Only 60% of sales reps are making or exceeding quotas.
• Only 37% of firms report they have implemented a formal sales process.
• 85% of those who do have a formal sales process report it has a positive impact on sales performance.

The first two numbers represent failure; however, the good news lies in the third number, which gives us a great clue as to how to solve the challenge.

Change the Face of Sales and Marketing

We can increase marketing and sales performance in several ways:

• Sales and marketing staffs should be in one department and should work closely together on every step of the process, from understanding the customers, to strategic marketing and sales planning, to closing sales.
• Traditional sales compensation packages should reflect bottom lines and margins, and sales staff pay should be tied directly to the average margins achieved through their sales. Today, sales are usually passed based on the revenues they bring in, which encourage discounting and lower margins.
• Sales’ first goal should be to provide solutions rather than to sell a product or a service.
• Sales and marketing people should never promise anything that the business cannot deliver.
• Sales should be part of ongoing customer service and customer satisfaction. Working with the marketing staff, sales should keep in touch with their customers.

Here are some of the keys to a successful integrated sales and marketing campaign:

• Target your market based on the behaviors, emotions, demographics, psychographics, and specific wants, needs and desires of those key customers who want your product or service.
• People choose products that work for them: those products that resonate emotionally and have personal meaning.
• The key to sales and marketing is to connect our products and services with people wants, needs and desires so that they tickle people’s emotional and personal touch points.
• Know as much about the who within your audience as possible.
• What elicits the emotional, psychological and intellectual responses that motivate that audience to buy from us and to build a sustainable relationship with us?
• What will make your customers and clients happy?
• We must differentiate our customers and recognize that they are individuals who can be segmented into large audiences but only if we understand what their needs are, what their buying potential represents and how they rank based on a scale that identifies their long-term value to you and your long-term value to them. Segment your audience by buying habits and purchasing behaviors.
• Rank customers by their value, from 1—meaning extremely likely to buy and to buy often—to 5—meaning, they wouldn’t buy from us if we were the only game in town or they buy products for rebates, only to return the product one the rebate check is cashed.
• Sales and marketing success is directly proportional to understanding customer needs, serving those needs, establishing relationships based on trust and credibility, and building, implementing and managing happiness.

If you focus on the who instead of the what and develop an integrated campaign, your response rates will deliver return on your investment.

Comments

[Dana Suazo]

I agree with your article, particularly with regard to the fact that sales and marketing departments should not promise anything that cannot be delivered. I have seen small businesses struggle when their sales people do this.

[Cam Beck]

"Only 60% of sales reps are making or exceeding quotas."

This is an interesting statistic, because I've observed that it's an ever-changing dynamic. Quotas are constantly changing so that high-producers can be compensated less and so that low-producers can actually meet their goals to make it more "fair."

Add that to the fact that sales people come and go with great regularity (undoubtedly partially because of the inability to have a fixed or at least predictable standard), and you have yourself a very turbulent vocation with consistently disaffected and confused employees.

[Susan Pascal Tatum]

Your first point (Sales and marketing staffs should be in one department and should work closely together on every step of the process, from understanding the customers, to strategic marketing and sales planning, to closing sales)is one I have believed for the last 10+ years. The younger, smaller businesses have the best chance of making this happen -- before the politics of Sales versus Marketing take hold.

As a marketing person, it took me over a decade to really understand that a) my job was to find and nurture leads for the sales force and 2)sales people actually had a lot to offer me in terms of understanding the customer. It wasn't until I accidentally wound up working for a VP of Sales that I achieved this enlightenment. Today I strongly advise all of my clients to get the two groups working together. It's often easier said than done.

[Ultra online marketing]

As a marketing person it took decades to understand the real fact in this field, but I really impressed with your post all about to increase the sales and marketing by changing the faces of old people. From this post I really got the extreme information. Thank you.

[Ben]

I totally echo Susan's comments. When I started out, I had no clue my marketing role was to find and nurture leads, who I could then pass on to my sales team. I thought marketing was all about making snazzy advertisements, and brand-building -- but didn't see what their purposes entailed until later on in my career (i.e. generating those leads!). Finally found that enlightenment when the roles were more clearly defined.

[Geoff Livingston]

60%. More than half are succeeding! Better than I thought.

[Lewis Green]

Dana,

So have I. In fact I served as a VP of marketing for a small high tech business in which sales almost always promised our software would do things that it wouldn't. Very frustrating!

Cam,

You make good points. I put the blame as much on Marketing as I do Sales. If marketing does its job the sales should close more quickly and at a higher rate. As for compensation, I think sales compensation is all wrong. That is another post!

Susan,

Thank you for your point of view. I agree that small businesses have the best chance to make this happen but in my experience they aren't. (See my comment above.) Old habits die hard.

Ultra Online Marketing,

Glad I can help!

Ben,

Thank you for sharing your story.

Geoff,

That's interesting. I would overall closure rates to be much higher if it were my dime paying the sales and marketing staffs. These rates include b2c, where lots of customers are ready to buy. Thanks for stopping by Geoff. Look forward to seeing you in a few.

Thanks for all the comments,
Lewis.

[John Maver]

Lewis

Great article and so many helpful points. I’d like to post some of them (with credit of course) on my blog.

I have often told the story of R&D delivering a new product that will perform at a 3 level. Marketing says “No, it is a 5 at least and here’s why if you look at it under these specific constraints.” They adjust the selling expectations accordingly and the budgets are set. Sales then gets the marketing materials and makes presentations with the product at a 7 since they know that Marketing never gets anything right because Legal won’t let them make aggressive claims. Quotas are set accordingly. The customer is blown away by the promises and benefits that are promised as a 7. BUT… When they use the product it doesn’t measure up. It is less than half as good as promised. It performs as only a 3. They return the product or don’t repurchase. Sales misses their quotas. Marketing doesn’t make their budgeted numbers. R&D spending is cut back. The whole company is in an uproar. People are fired and the stock price plummets.

Who is to blame? Guess you will just have to hire a consultant to find out!

I love this story!

One more point. While marketing and sales must work closely together and have a common customer in mind as you suggest, I believe the creative tension of having them apart works well. It does for Procter & Gamble in the brand management system.

Thanks for a great article.

John

[Lewis Green]

John,

Thanks for the great comment. P&G may be an anomaly. In my experience, the creative tension when sales and marketing are separated leads to what you describe in your comment—distrust and a lack of communication. However, if separating the two areas works for some, I am in favor of it. I just want to see it work and the two departments work together instead of against each other.

Lewis