I am coming off the CMO Summit in San Francisco put on by the Aberdeen Group and I have a lot of questions. I come from the sales side of things and I have at least a basic understanding of the marketing side. After this meeting I think I see just how much more there is to consider on the marketing side that I simply pass off and, I suppose, take for granted.
While I am willing to admit that I don’t give marketers their due I think that the same needs to be considered from the marketing side of the ledger as well. So what am I saying here? If you are a marketer or someone who assists sales in any way I would love to know what our impression or view of the salesperson’s job is. I know it sounds a little odd and maybe even just plain weird but I really think that there is more of a disconnect than I ever suspected between these two supposedly linked worlds.
Marketer’s are so intent on brand and demographics and psychographics and just plain graphics that they often miss the point. For all of the marketing information and data that is at our disposal in this hyper informational world I rarely see marketers being able to produce truly qualified leads that are more than just a name, phone number, e-mail and the hint that there may be some interest in the product or service that sales is tasked with selling.
A lot of the fault of this lies on the sales side as well. Sales people can be impatient and obnoxious for sure. Of course, if your livelihood was dependent on making things happen faster than is usually possible you might be demanding and a bit obnoxious as well. Sales people tend to be ‘cowboys’ in that they are much quicker to ask for forgiveness than permission. You know why that is though? It’s because in the sales process you actually uncover what the prospect REALLY needs rather than what we have ID’d their need as.
You see regardless of how many forms and surveys that are filled out they will always be limited in how well they can ‘categorize’ a lead. Why? It’s because in order for people to fill out a survey or give more ‘data’ they still need to be constrained by the question they are asked. Finding out whether something is ‘extremely important’ or ‘somewhat important’ to a person and their job is extremely limited in what it actually tells us. There are specific reasons why something is extremely important to someone and only somewhat (or not at all) important to another. The trouble comes with the realization that a person that answers a question one way can be just as much of a prospect as a person that answers it another way. The reality is in the details as to why they answered it differently. In many cases, people do not even realize that something should be more important than it is in their world.
Anyway, I have to say that while marketers can gather more data than ever I am not so sure we are any closer to truly understanding why people buy or walk away. We tell ourselves we are because we have so much information but we confuse information with inspiration. Information is very limited because we can’t really understand the exact nature of a person’s need until we speak to them and work with them to help them fully understand exactly what is happening in their world. This is where sales can be so interesting and yet so tricky all at once. Most folks don’t just open up and pour out their greatest business fears because of the perception of them being weak or some other very human reason. Only trust and real exploration of the situation can help reveal that. In order to get that trust there needs to be more than a survey. There needs to be more than an analysis of the ‘sufacely’ data that surveys, forms and web analytics produces.
While it sounds basic we have to remember that products and services are bought by people not behaviors. In most cases, these two things are very different. So what’s the answer? I have no idea. Until sales and marketing are completely connected at the hip there will always be this trouble. I suspect that except for the most progressive and forward thinking companies this will not happen in the near future and may never happen at all. Hate to be a sales ‘pessimist’ but the one place I live in is reality and rarely do marketing profiles and reality match up.
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You touch on a great – if not a bit painful – point. Direct communication is a critical component that is all too often missing on the marketing side. A successful salesperson “grows” a lead into prospect and into a customer. This may take several calls and face-to-face meetings. However, if the salesperson is not armed with relevant information on his/her market and industry trends, then all the calls in the world may not lead to much. This is where Internal Communications (a company’s intranet, blog, etc.) comes in. If Sales and Marketing can share best practices, experiences, data and just plan “dialog” within a forum-type setting, some of the barriers that exist between the two necessary components may be removed. I know that my seem too optimistic, but I’m a “glass is half full” kind of gal!