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What about a "work exchange?" having a handful of marketing and sales folks switch jobs for a period of time?
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6 Answers
This is such and interesting question/idea. Typically the lack of understanding in each area leads to isolating or creating separate silos between the sales and marketing teams. I lump PR into this process as well. However, in order for the departments to truly work together, it's to experience a day in their shoes. I used to work with a pharmaceutical consultant years ago (30 years in the business) on marketing for big brand pharma. He started out as a salesperson and eventually worked his way into marketing. He told me that in pharma, it's difficult to break into marketing unless you truly understand the sales process. Whether it's pharma or another industry, experiencing the sales or marketing process, training your teams to understand and work cross functionally and collaboratively (technology allows you to do this), creates not only stronger teams, but also teams that work to reach overall company sales/marketing goals.
I agree with Deirdre that understanding the roles can help the two groups better work together, but I am not a big fan of the "work exchange". I think David Brock said it best on the roundtable that the "alignment needs to be around the customer and with that the understanding that there is no separation, but a difference in roles."
If we want to ensure that alignment is addressed having both marketing and sales working together to define the customer, their buying process, develop the process and share common goals, objectives and measurements - this will go a long way in bringing unity.
Carlos Hidalgo
@cahidalgo
Carlos,
Since my first sales corporate sales job in 1980 with AT&T, everyone has agreed that marketing and sales should be working together for all the reasons you state.
To me it's analogous that 100% of parents of teenagers agree that the household would run better if the kids and parents would work together. To the best of my knowledge I've never heard of any action items that parents have come up with to get the kids on the same page with them.
I just threw the work exchange out there to get one idea on the table. There might be a thousand ideas that are better. In fact, there probably are.
Over the last several months, I've seen tons of discussions and presentations, blog posts, etc by a lot of people, stating that companies would be more profitable if sales and marketing were aligned.
Enough already with why it's important. The question I'm posing is how do we get there?
You didn't state in your answer why you don't think work exchange is a productive idea. I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on that and; what's another actionable idea to get sales and marketing (especially sales) to buy into the age old concept that sales and marketing ought to work together?
I'm a huge proponent of job rotations between sales and marketing. I've used it several times in my career to make alignment 'sticky'. It should not be organic but a formal program designed with intent to specific goals and objectives - what positions, how long, etc. Some examples are pre-sales to sales enablement, pre-sales to product marketing, product marketing to pre-sales, product marketing to field /inside sales, field marketing to product marketing, field marketing to sales enablement, etc. There's more information at http://www.cloudbook.net/cloudbook-search.php?search=Crandell
Christine - thanks for the link. I just saved the cloudbook article in Evernote, in my 2Read file. BTW, I enjoyed your webcast a few weeks ago on alignment.
This idea of job exchange has origins even in smaller companies in different industries. At one point in my way-distant checkered past, I worked in retail carpeting store. Every carpet sales person spent 2 days working in the warehouse and 2 days with installers as part of their training. The warehouse people spent time working with the sales people on a regular rotating basis. It created a very productive environment.
Rick:
I agree with you 100% that we need to stop talking about alignment and start addressing it. However, as I have said many times before - one of the reasons that the alignment issue continues to persist is we are trying to address a symptom. Alignment is not the core issue, but rather a symptom of greater problems.
What we have seen to fix it is marketing and sales coming together to define and develop the processes to better manage leads and buyer/customer engagement. In working collaboratively the focus shifts to the customer, revenues are improved and there is a shared common goal. Time and time again when we have worked this process approach with our clients, the symptom of alignment disappears. To note, this is far more than just defining a lead, but must involve all of the steps of a lead management process.
Want to change alignment in an organization? Start addressing some of the core problems that are causing it.
Carlos Hidalgo
@cahidalgo
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