If sales hates marketing, why not the reverse?

Google the following four words: Why sales hates marketing.

What you will find are pages of reasons, a litany of lament. You will find dozens of the top 5 reasons, even more of the top 10 reasons, you will find countless reasons why marketing is not merely disliked but hated by the sales profession.

Now google the following four words: Why marketing hates sales.

What you will find is…not so much. Here and there you will encounter a few rants, but mostly you will find a continuation of the previous essays on why sales-hates-marketing.

What’s going on here? Could it be that marketing does not hate sales? After all these years of alleged conflict and across-the-hall resentment, has such intense “hatred” not been mutual?

No it is not mutual. Marketing generally does not “hate” sales and the reason is simple: Especially in the world of small to mid-size industrial manufacturing, people employed to provide marketing services simply can’t afford to “hate” anyone. They are already under-appreciated and undervalued by the leadership in their organizations and are in no position to wage war with anyone, including the sales staff. So then, what are marketing people doing that is so offensive to the sales people down the hall?

The answer, unfortunately, is that in many small to mid-size manufacturing companies especially, marketing people are simply not allowed to do much marketing.

Marketing has become a misnomer in these companies. What passes for branding and marketing is the reluctant funding of marketing communications, aka “marcom” – rightly regarded as a create-and-update cost center that oversees the manufacturing of web content, catalogs, line cards, brochures and PowerPoint presentations that are all produced from the product sales perspective directed by the VP of Sales and Marketing.

The VP of Sales and Marketing.

In many small to mid-size manufacturing firms, the title VP of Sales and Marketing would seem to point to a very conflicted individual. This has in our experience not been the case. He or she may distrust marketing, but invariably loves sales. The marketing side is barely a distraction. Odds are, the VP of Sales and Marketing came up through the sales ranks and was given the title so as to achieve in a single stroke a genuine measure of employee recognition, followed by an equal measure of payroll cost conservation, followed by a bolted-on measure of insurance that in the event “marketing” were to ever become relevant to the company, well there you go.

Which is how so many small to mid-size industrial manufacturers go -- not as companies uplifted by branding and marketing discipline, but held down by product worship and sales forces deprived of the means to achieve their companies' greater sales potential.

Every time an organization substitutes marcom for branding and marketing, it substitutes sales support with sales appeasement. So the next time you hear someone repeat the old song about how sales people hate marketing, you will know the truth. What sales people hate is branding and marketing done wrong. And they will rightly continue to hate it, so long as top management continues to encourage it.

jb

www.centrifuge-now.com

Develop your brand identity and your sales will follow…

Centrifuge just completed a qualitative research study among specifying design engineers and once again we were reminded of a bedrock truth regarding branding and selling in the industrial sector. Brand image and customer preference go hand-in-hand. When an organization’s leadership works hard to develop and manage the company’s brand identity, sales will follow, and there are two reasons for this:

1. Developing a clear brand identity fosters a clear brand image.

The brand identity of your company is entirely yours to manage. It is your definition of the greater competitive value only your company can deliver. Define this value poorly however, and your company’s brand image becomes devalued. Your brand goes forth by way of a line card, website and sales presentations that may as well be interchangeable with those of your competitors, because from a specifier’s point of view, they are interchangeable.

2. Branding and selling are inseparable disciplines.

Specifying design engineers will not recognize your greater value until you stop selling from your line card and start uncovering the problems (costs) they are experiencing, costs which your core competencies can solve. But if your organization is not guided by this deeper understanding of value definition (value definition being the central function of a highly developed brand identity), then your people will not understand the difference, and your marketplace will never be exposed to your greater value delivery potential.

The reason for this disconnect is one of perspective – yours and not your customer’s. If a specifying engineer can solve a design problem by looking at your line card, they will very likely find the same “solution” from one of your competitors and probably for less cost. But when your company takes the perspective of the customer, you start with a truly consultative understanding of the problems and related costs being experienced by the customer, costs very often yet to be recognized by the customer and his or her organization.

Brand identity development facilitates this greater understanding of value definition and value delivery. But in the absence of this development, all of your marketing communications and sales efforts will continue to sell your company short.

jb

www.centrifuge-now.com