We're back my friends.
In this lesson, we will continue to explore
the nature of the interaction between sales and marketing.
In our two previous meetings,
we talked about the ways people in marketing and sales view each other.
To comprehend why they think the way they think,
we have to understand the root causes.
A very good work on the subject was written by
Dominique Rouzies and her colleagues titled,
Sales and Marketing Integration: A Proposed Framework.
This was published in 2005.
At the very bottom,
the problem lies on the different mindsets the two areas have.
Each has a different perspective on problems and how to solve them.
There are six facets that shape the sales and
marketing mindsets they are, customer versus product,
personal relationship versus analysis,
continuous activities versus sporadic projects,
field versus office, results versus process,
short versus long-term orientation.
We will see each of them now.
Customer versus product.
Sales people take responsibility for a group of
clients in their territory and for a market segment.
They typically sell the whole portfolio of products and services.
They are much more likely to be customer loyal than product loyal.
In contrast, marketers,
brand and product managers are in charge of a product or a group of products.
All of these products will be channelled through one sales force only.
When a salesperson dedicates a client visit exclusively to say,
product A, he or she is abandoning all other products during that time.
The implication is that,
the marketers must compete among themselves for sales force attention.
The same is not true about sales people,
they don't compete for customers because they are allocated to each of them.
In conclusion, a salesperson is another salesperson's ally.
For a marketer, another marketer is probably an enemy.
Things get worse because of how incentives are managed.
Salespeople variable pay is in most cases
based on product bundles, not individual products.
They can make up for low sales in one product,
by high sales in another.
Also they don't compete for remuneration.
Each one pursues their own quotas.
If everybody surpasses their quotas,
everybody makes more money.
In contrast for marketers,
reward is based on sales and profitability of their specific products,
they cannot compensate the failure of their product anywhere else.
Their annual bonus is allocated to each department,
so marketers compete for a piece of a fixed amount of bonus.
Second facet, personal relationship versus analysis.
Salespeople are as a rule more people oriented.
They must build relationships with their customers
and the profound knowledge of each client,
allows them to create customized individual selling strategies.
Marketing people deal with customer clusters and market segments.
This is the only possible way since they cannot address the needs and wants
of thousands or millions of individual customers.
In other words, marketing thinks of customers as archetypes like,
Mr. Joe Doe is a 35 to 44 year old,
he's married, he attended college,
lives in an urban area,
and makes more than $125,000 per year.
The basis here, is market research data.
Salespeople think of customers as real people,
as an example, Mr. Joe Doe is the owner of Doe Corp.
He's 49 years old,
he's married, he has two kids,
Mary and Joe Junior.
His company has sales of $25 million,
having grown 20% over last year.
A third facet, continuous daily activity versus sporadic projects.
Since people are continually selling,
presenting products, taking orders and doing customer service,
once the end of the month arrives and sales quotas are met or not met,
the clock starts ticking again,
and it's another round of monthly sales.
Most of the work in marketing tends to be more project-like,
a new product launch,
the creation of a new ad campaign,
or preparing a new marketing plan.
There are some recurring tasks in marketing like budget reviews,
forecasts and updates and et cetera.
But nonetheless, the core of the work is not routine.
Another aspect, field versus office.
Salespeople are face to face with customers all the time.
They suffer rejection day in day out,
but success also comes frequently.
Salespeople don't have to put up with bosses on a daily basis,
maybe just a couple of days every two months or so.
Marketers win or lose much less frequently.
The wants and needs of the boss often get more attention than customers.
Another facet, results versus process.
Salespeople performance feedback is immediate.
Did they sell or not?
Was the quota met or not?
It is black and white and no grey zones here.
As a counterpoint, when you measure marketing results it's all grey zones.
Did the new ad work?
How much additional sales,
the new packaging brought?
Did the sales peak this month is due to our new pricing strategy,
or did the competition mess up?
Concrete results are measured in sales and
market share but they can become moving targets.
Next, short-term versus long-term orientation.
The incentive schemes for salespeople,
and the results orientation,
steer them to a short-term way of thinking.
Sales quotas are monthly or quarterly based.
Almost no salesperson can tell if they met their annual quota,
there's no such thing.
Marketers mostly focus on targets for annual market share or annual sales.
It is a continuous process aimed at achieving a goal months and months ahead.
Not to mention that part of the marketing work takes years to come to fruition,
think about the development of a new product.
So, we have seen the six determinants that shape the mindset of both marketing and sales.
Not knowing the other sides' mindset is what's behind the conflicts.
Now, a provocative question.
Could we argue that marketing and sales attract different types of personalities,
and mindsets, or people get the sales mindset,
or a market mindset because they started working in sales or marketing?
In other words, is that nature or nurture? Who knows?
One thing for sure,
we now understand what's behind this conflict,
but that's not enough.
The question is, how can we solve it?
Stay tuned my friends more to come. Goodbye.
Samantha MazzeroMSc, MBA, BS Math
Nelson YoshidaPh.D., MBA, B.Eng.
Cesar RodriguesSpecialist Professor
