Ask The Coach: Sales and Marketing Functions – Under different roofs

While I was asked many questions the first post for Ask the Coach will only address one. The others will be answered in weeks to come, however Mohammed Thiab asked me a question of great import and as a startup strategist, and I need to answer it in length.

Mohammed asks:In your view, do you think it is better to differentiate between marketing and sales functions within the same company?

When it comes to role, this is a question that is relative to the size of the organization. Smaller companies may not be able to afford a sales strategist/executive and a marketing strategist/executive. In this case the functions may fall into one person’s lap. Whether this is the case or not, the responsibilities of this person or these people are to foster interdependence on sales and marketing that is measurable and viable to proper lead cultivation.

There are specific functions of marketing and sales, and it is imperative that they are separate. The sales person may evangelize and in turn market, and the marketer may pitch and thus sell, but the roles are distinctly different and they should be considered as such. A marketer’s primary function is to communicate the value of their offering to the masses and sow the seeds to building a name brand. The primary function of the salesperson is to communicate the value of their offering to the sales ready prospect, ONLY AFTER determining that it is the right time.

Sometime in the next week I will review Brian Carroll’s book “Lead Generation for the Complex Sale”. This tome is an inexhaustible resource for those that want marketing to pass leads to sales that sales utilize and sales to return critiques to marketing to improve the process. What I will share here parallels many of Brian’s thoughts, but I want to start by quoting an early post from this blog. I am not a big fan of having someone click back and forth, so I will paste the pertinent part here. This post outlines the primary responsibilities of a marketing department.

In a post on Building a plan:

The pitfall of many a sales plan is to expect marketing to generate leads. In my opinion, and I am sure this one will create arguments from many camps; marketing’s primary role is to create three things:

1. Product or service (BRAND) awareness

2. BRAND knowledge

3. BRAND value

Now before any gets too upset with this comment, this is a primary action item of their role. I am in no way belittling the myriad of responsibilities of marketing. If they have done their job well, in some arena’s they can get the phone ringing (BRAND value). Other roles including, value, media selection, target demographics and target audiences all fit into one of these three categories.

Unfortunately if a marketing department starts to get the phone ringing, or the web registrations flowing, or the tradeshow sign-ups delivered, as sales organizations we tend to get lazy. THIS IS FOLLY! MARKETING’S CONTRIBUTION TO LEAD FLOW SHOULD BE CONSIDERED GRAVY, NOT THE STEAK. The best thing a marketing department can do for a sales department is assure that every person contacted is in the proper demographic and has BRAND awareness. Beyond that, lead generation is our job as coaches.

O.K. so how are we going to do this? Well there are several ways to generate lead flow, but they all involve the same principles:

1. Build a network within your target industry or market.

For my current role and this blog, I use Linkedin and spoke. When I was at WorkMetro, we would have our reps join the local chamber of commerce and the local HR organizations. At SurfControl I joined every security network forum and IT forum I could find. The bottom line, I KNEW WHO TO TALK TO AT RELEVANT COMPANIES FOR WHAT MY COMPANY WAS SELLING. Use multiple resources, everyone is not on the same list, get the relevant information and know who to approach.

If you can build a network then your next job is to:

2. Build a reputation within your network.

If you can show people that other people they know trust you, the lead will listen. Get write ups, permission for referrals, case studies. Do not leave this to marketing; it is not solely their job to create an image for the company. The BRAND is their job; the company’s reputation is in the hands of every employee. If one can build equity within your industry, they can elevate the organization.

3. Know who your next prospects will be.

This is one that most people know, BUT RARELY DO. If you are setting appointments, who are the next 50? If you are trying to build your prospect list, who are your next twenty customers going to be? This type of focus is required and can be promoted in weekly one on one’s. As a coach we should know these target lists, and we should help make them malleable. THE LIST IS AN EVER GROWING COMPONENT OF A SALES PERSON’S REPERTOIRE, if it is not utilized; they are not maximizing their efforts.

4. The Company is not the Lead, the Contacts are.

Knowing all the players in the game is essential. If you stop at a gatekeeper, or a department head, or just talk to a C-level decision maker, you not approaching all of the leads in an enterprise. If there is one person in complete control, great, but this is rare.

Now to add Brian’s point. Marketing can get things to happen, and they can generate many inbound leads.If they do not take action on the lead process, sales will almost always ignore their efforts. A marketing department must:

1.Follow up on leads they generate and rate them.

2.Determine from these ratings which are sales ready and should be passed to sales.

3.Manage the lead pipeline from inbound or cultivation sources in a CRM

4.Utilize this CRM to get feedback from Sales.

For sales our responsibility is to follow up on every lead delivered by marketing. It is also our obligation to give marketing constructive feedback on leads in an effort to improve their delivery mechanism. Marketing wants to deliver good leads, so tell them when they succeed and also when they fail.

From another post on building a plan:

One of the great pitfalls of the overambitious sales person is making the assumption that every lead/contact is a potential prospect. Leads by definition are anyone and everyone in a specific demographic. To build a prospect, one must develop a lead. So what do I mean when I write develop a lead? What is the difference between a lead and a prospect? There are two important factors to consider in elevating a lead to a prospect, and as coaches we should ask these questions whenever building prospect lists:

1.Does the contact potentially have a need for what I am offering?

This is the first phase of qualification, and one neglected more often than not. It is important to uncover some challenge that your product/service overcomes early on. If this is manufactured, meaning the sales rep determines the need instead of truly hearing pain and pain that your offering alleviates, there is little chance the prospect will convert into a viable opportunity. A product/service should fit a need of the contact that removes some difficulty in their immediate responsibly, or helps with a problem they were asked to solve. If the contact is not helped, find a more appropriate contact. If your solution does not fit anyone in a company, then you are contacting the wrong company.

At this point some of you may be thinking this is not new information. Perhaps, but how often do you plan to this phase of lead development? When you are building prospect lists, do you ask what your solution can do for the contact? A good plan will include specifics detailing the flow of a lead to a prospect.

Train to the expectation and have a healthy kit of qualifying questions. In my opinion common qualifying questions are too specific. We get caught up in determining how our product can be a fit. It is better to start with questions that pertain to the contact and their role. Uncover needs with questions that get them talking about what is good, and what is not. If they are using competitive products, do not start with why your product is better. Someone decided to buy this product, and it may have been your lead. Some good first questions:

What are your responsibilities?

(I personally ask people, “What do you do?”, but this is such a vague open ended question it can be interpreted in many, many ways. I like it because the lead starts to talk about what they want and from that point I am only steering. It is a tough question that is met with uncertainty and one to practice before applying).

What do you like most/least about your job?Dig into this one. Be careful, the contact will usually steer these answers towards your niche. If they have a competitive product, they will talk to the product. Steer them back to the job itself. If they do not like getting to work on time, this is important to know.

What are the challenges that you have had to live with? Again, try and make this about more than your product or a competitor. If their boss is a challenge, this is good to ferret out early; you or a colleague may be working with that person some day. If they have trouble getting non-budgetary items approved, this is something to know early.

Remember, this is phase one of qualification and you are just painting the picture. Train the team to go for enough information to determine if this is a prospect. We do not need all the answers immediately, and too many set questions will turn a lead off not on.

2.Does the opportunity to sell to this contact fit within my timeline?

All too often, we see that we have a solution for a contact’s problem, but are unwilling to accept that they cannot do anything about it today. I had a boss once, and while she was fantastic, she never believed that budget was an issue. She could not understand why I had opportunities forecasted out as far as I did, when they were completely qualified, and had bought into my value proposition. I learned, with her, to not place those prospects in my pipeline until it fit her vision.

If someone has potential value, but it is outside the scope of your timeline to close, your energy is better spent on other prospects. This may seem confusing so let me give some examples:1. You are selling enterprise software and the company is too small. It may be a fit but they do not have the resources to maintain it.

2. The company runs on a strict budget, and while they have uncovered a need, it is not going to get addressed until it meets budget review and is approved. This process is over six months away.

3. They have just bought an inferior product.

4. There was an acquisition and the other company had a competitive product.

All of these examples share the same challenge. It is not the right time to engage in opportunity development. This means it is the wrong time to engage in lead development. It is important to keep in touch and be on their mind, but passing this lead through the system is a waste of energy. So often, when I share this philosophy, the first question I am asked is, “How much time is the right amount of time?” I always use a 2X the average time from lead to close. If your sales cycle is four months, a lead cannot become a prospect until they are eight months from a decision. If it is 30 days, then you do not want to move them until they are 60 from a decision (Although with extremely short sales cycles I tend to increase it to 3X).

If you gather this information properly, you will be adding an insurmountable amount of aid to the marketing department. Do not be shy, sharing this information and share it as often as possible.

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