Marketing Minute: The truth about sales and marketing – October 2024

By Paul Friederichsen

Many years ago, floorcovering companies would have a management-level position that combined sales and marketing together, such as vice president of sales and marketing. Often, this would indicate that top-level management saw no real distinction between the roles of sales and marketing. To them, the goal was the same either way: move more flooring. While there are still those with combined titles, the trend has become to separate the two-and even to add a vice president of brand in larger companies. Historically, with flooring producers, there has been little understanding of the distinctive importance of each and that they should not be rivals but work together toward brand growth. The brand is king, and sales and marketing serve the king in their own complementary ways.

WHY EACH IS IMPORTANT
Sales without a true marketing team will find their work a lot tougher. Marketing “bombardment” softens the beachhead by creating awareness and differentiation, building brand recognition, or even generating leads. Marketing increases visibility for products, tells the brand’s story, informs prospect audiences, and makes the brand experience more tantalizing and desirable. That’s why, as marketing expert Mark Ritson concluded, you get a sales team to respect marketing by showing them how marketing can make them more sales.

Marketing without a dedicated sales team will fail to close the deal. A good sales team changes a transactional experience into a relationship with the brand. The sales team engages customers directly and is the brand’s most ardent ambassador. Sales maintains this service-minded relationship.

All too often, management or ownership will prioritize sales over marketing. This is a mistake. While investing in sales personnel may yield short-term gains, it does little to invest in the brand. Personnel may come and go-and attempt to take their book of business with them. Strong marketing-supported brands have a greater chance of keeping the customer, since it is the brand that is serving the interests of the customer, not the individual at that particular moment.

ALIGNING THE TWO
For all the planning and research and strategizing that goes into developing, launching and growing a brand in today’s floorcovering marketplace, it still comes down to human interaction. The two groups most vested with the task of growing their brand in this challenging environment are marketing and sales. The mutual understanding and respect for the important roles each group plays are key to working together. Sadly, however, only about 8% of companies have a strong alignment between sales and marketing, according to Forrester, a global market research company.

Strong alignment is easier said than done. Alignment starts with understanding and appreciating the roles and responsibilities marketing and sales each have in supporting the brand. Like a marriage, their strengths should complement, not compete, with one another. While marketing should take the lead directionally, it should never dominate nor diminish the importance of sales’ role in brand building.

Depending on the company environment and personalities, sales and marketing departments may even become competing rivals. Often, sales will argue that they know the customer better than marketing, since they are in everyday contact with them. Since they believe they are better informed, they will also believe they know what’s best. On the other hand, marketing may blame poor results of a campaign on poor follow-through from sales.

Marketing and salespeople have different personalities. A recent piece in the “Harvard Business Review” on the seven personality traits of top salespeople validates that. For example, successful sales professionals scored high on traits such as achievement orientation, lack of discouragement and lack of self-consciousness. These are needed for the fearless, aggressive, extroverted behavior that most associate with sales professionals.

Marketing department personalities may differ dramatically from those in sales, marked by a higher degree of strategic orientation and less tactical thinking. It’s a concern for marketshare over sales volume; planning versus responding; positioning rather than value props. Marketers can tend to be more introverted than their sales counterparts, and thus may run the risk of being overwhelmed in meetings and by differences of opinions. However, marketers can (and should) be good listeners, because the sales department can be a wealth of firsthand market intelligence when they work together.

To win the game, you should resist the temptation of tackling each other in the huddle.

WINNING THE GAME
The next time you find sales and marketing departments at odds, use these compelling stats as motivation to work together better:
• Organizations with tightly aligned sales and marketing functions enjoy 36% higher customer retention rates, according to MarketingProfs.
• Aligning sales and marketing also leads to 38% higher sales win, according to MarketingProfs.
• Sales and marketing alignment can help your company become 67% better at closing deals, according to Marketo.
• Aligning both departments can help generate 209% more revenue from marketing, according to Marketo.
• B2B organizations with tightly aligned sales and marketing operations achieve 24% faster three-year revenue growth and 27% faster three-year profit growth, according to SiriusDecisions.
• Companies with strong sales and marketing alignment achieve a 20% annual growth rate, according to Aberdeen Research Group.

Today’s flooring brands can no longer afford tension between marketing and sales. There is too much at stake. They must work as one team with one goal: to win.

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