Have you spoken to your sales team recently?

I recently met with a client to discuss ideas for a marketing campaign that she wanted to launch for a

particular offering from her company –an offering for a typical B2B enterprise. Initially we discussed

coming up with something different and exciting that would catch the fancy of the target audience to

remove the monotony from an otherwise boring offering. However, as we got into the details, a few

things became clear. Coming up with something out of the ordinary would have certainly been

innovative and different. But the client wanted a quick start and did not have the flexibility of a long

preparation period which is essential in such cases. More importantly, a jazzy campaign was likely to

end up as a marketing-led one with little or no participation from sales. Ultimately, the sales team has

to buy-in completely into a marketing campaign or it to be successful. Finally, we converged on an

approach that would be acceptable to sales and help them strike a conversation with the prospective

client

.This leads to the important question – what is the objective of a marketing campaign? If it is to draw

leads and is more sales-focused, it is a must to involve sales in the conceptualizing and planning of

the campaign. Marketing needs to ensure that outcomes can be linked directly to sales activities. For

example, every activity in the campaign should focus on how sales can get leads or connect with

prospects. If you are unable to show this linkage, there is a pretty good chance of the marketing

campaign not reaching its full potential. I agree that getting time from the sales team will not be easy,

however, the marketing team’s internal customer is the sales team and so all efforts have to be taken

to get them involved.

Similarly, even if the objective of the campaign is to create brand awareness and increase mind share

– it is still important to connect with sales or field persons to get their perspective. If they are included

in the initial parts, such a campaign is likely to resonate with the sales team’s view of the market and

they are likely to use the artefacts from such a campaign more. I have seen the opposite happen at a

client’s place. The marketing team which was trying to build brand awareness was unable to connect

with the sales force owing to lack of bandwidth and pretty much operated in silos. Consequently, a lot

of hard work was squandered because there was no real synergy in the objectives of sales and

marketing. Marketing needs to enable sales and if there are no regular conversations, the outcomes

are unlikely to be impressive and efforts frittered away.

Think about it – what has been the approach of your marketing team so far? What have been the

outcomes? How could they have been different? Do share your experiences. Also see more info @

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