Who’s fault is it anyway?

So you did all the multi module marketing, you are killing yourselves with the million pieces of SEO, lead nurturing, online advertising, events, social and viral activities in order to bring in the best possible leads for your sales team. You are stepping out and become everything to everyone including a database admin and web master and doing several people’s job while many, who do not live in the marketing world and not know how complex marketing had become, are thinking that marketers are running around with crayons and not doing anything but creating pretty things.

Some time ago when sales were asked by upper management why they were not meeting their numbers, the answer was always that marketing is not doing much to help and the few leads they get from marketing are not any good. Now that there are metrics that show numbers and actions of leads, sales’ response is that the leads may be the right contacts and may have read something about the company or products but they have no current projects, thus they are still not good.

So we arrived to the point where marketers not only have to do the million different activities to bring in leads from various avenues, show metrics, roi, but now those leads have to be instant opportunities as well. Many marketers are confused by this. Why? Because marketing is described as “the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large”. To bring opportunities instead of leads to sales would mean that marketers would have to do some initial persuasion to get the leads ready to be opportunities, which is actually selling. According to Wikipedia selling is the art of persuasion. “Contrary to popular belief, the methodological approach of selling refers to a systematic process of repetitive and measurable milestones, by which a salesperson relates his or her offering of a product or service in return enabling the buyer to achieve their goal in an economic way” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selling Which I believe would mean that a lead, even if it does not have a current project, would qualify if other attributes were met and the “systematic process of repetitive milestones” that needs to be done before an actual “sale”, would be selling, which should be done by sales.

But let’s look at this from the sales point of you. Upper management is hard on sales. They are only good as their last accomplishments. Even if they sold millions last year, if they do not make their numbers this year, they are out the door. Even the best of the best sometimes “hate” selling and making cold calls. Many are doing it because they are driven by the money but not because they LOVE it. Usually, the best sales people’s personality is just that, sales people. Meaning that they tend to be smooth talkers who can persuade others, if that does not work then they may switch to arrogance, or intimidation. The most successful sales guys I know are extremely smart and they are always a step ahead. So when these guys are asked by upper management what’s up, it is not a shocker that they would use any means of defending themselves and try to win some time until their next big win.

In addition, the expectations from sales many times are unrealistic. I know sales people who have daily quotas. When a sales person is pressured to make a daily quota they are busy “push selling” not building relationships or following the “systematic process of repetitive milestones”. If they have to meet a quota for a certain number of calls and activities then they will do a 5 minutes call that would not allow them to understand anything about their customers, their needs, how the product they are selling would fit within those needs, etc. The only thing they would be able to do is push the product from the get go and most of the times be turned away.

It is not the leads or sales that is the problem. The problem is that as marketing, sales is changing as well. Buyers got smarter and they no longer want the old type of car sales man selling to them. The management of an organization need to realize who this new audience is and allow their sales people time to create a relationship and spend enough time with prospects to discuss their problems.

In conclusion, in most cases both marketing and sales are doing everything they can. It is not one or the other’s fault. There are other things to be considered such as upper management, directives, the economy, and evolving consumers.

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