Waiting in my inbox this morning was an interesting piece by Geoffrey James. He walks us through the five lies marketing tells its sales counterparts. With a title like that you know comments are soon to follow–as of this post he had 38.
For the sake of brevity, here are the lies we marketers tell. 1) Branding is vital to success. 2) Marketing can train sales to sell. 3) B2B marketers conduct scientific research. 4) Marketing can deal with the press. 5). Marketing delivers good leads to sales. There you have it. Now stop lying.
It’s not that easy stop lying, Mr James. 1) At some level branding is vital, but it’s the definition of branding that is changing. 2) Maybe marketing can’t train the sales organization, but we can give them an arsenal of weapons to use. 3) Research is research. Every little bit of intel you can gather about your target audience is helpful. I guess he’s just saying when you collect good information about an audience don’t call it scientific. Okay. 4) Someone that has written for 15 years should be mindful when it comes to lectures about dealing with the press. If you’ve only found 4 diamonds in the rough, maybe it’s you. And 5) This was his big miss. Will sales ever be satisfied with marketing’s efforts on their behalf? It is fair to expect that a cost center and revenue center have differing definitions of leads, or qualified leads. Let me start another paragraph here, because this is our sandbox.
There is no doubt in our collective minds at VLG that marketing and sales do not communicate with each other as well as they should. We also believe marketing works for sales and companies should consider turning marketing into a revenue center rather than cost center. This shift would go a long way, aligning the incentives and measuring stick by which both groups are compared. Talk about bridging the gap between the two. Did I say sandbox?
Maybe I meant soapbox.
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