Marketing & Sales on the Cutting Edge?

Marketing and sales have always been on the cutting edge of business. In other words, when something needs to be cut, first goes marketing, then goes sales. These two related fields are responsible for the company top line. When the revenue falters, heads roll. How do you turn that around? How do you move sales from the cutting edge to the leading edge?

The whale can live without those ... for a while.

Lots of marketing and sales people try finger pointing. The best finger pointer may stay about two months longer – to enjoy 60 days of scrutiny in a company on the verge of collapse. The fact is, marketing and sales need each other. Sure, the occasional marketing superstar can get by with sales force of newbie order takers, just like a sales genius can get by with marketing team of college interns. Most companies, however, need competencies in both camps to reach revenue looking like success.

So how do you move your sales and marketing teams from the cutting edge to the leading edge? How do you make them so valuable individually and collectively that a CEO would sooner give up her annual bonus than touch one penny of sales and marketing compensation? The answer probably isn’t that hard to figure out. Companies have been doing it for decades. Well, they’ve been doing it half way – sort of like only plugging half the holes in a bucket at a time.

Companies have, for decades, sent salespeople to training and marketing people to conferences. Both approaches are great, until they try to work together. They have different playbooks, different expectations. They haven’t learned a common language and rallied around a common goal. The sales people see marketing as a support to their vital revenue function. The marketing people see sales as a mouthpiece for their latest campaign. Each group is much more than what they seem.

Training needs to bring them both groups to the same methods and goals. It needs to build competencies, knowledge, and skills in their respective disciplines, while at the same time reinforcing the team approach. The offensive tackle and the wide receiver have very different jobs and different skills (not to mention different physiques), but they work from the same playbook to move the team down the field. In practice, they don’t do all the same drills, but they have an intimate understanding of the other man’s job.

Bring your team together, train them to be the best at what they do and the best support for what the other guy does. Build a playbook the whole team can work from.