Do you have a marketing or a sales problem?

Last updated June 10, 2022

Business development executives often blame the marketing team for sending poor-quality leads. The marketing team points back to sales for not being able to close the deal. Is there a line in the sand?

Today's buyers are much more informed than they once were. And the increase in competition and the amount of information now available to buyers has made it even more difficult to stand out.

So if you're not doing the kind of business you want, what's the problem?

Start with these 3 questions:

• What is your process for closing leads?
• How are you presenting your value?
• Are you attracting the right type of people?

Both sales and marketing roles are distinctive but complementary.

What is your process for closing leads?

How do buyers buy and what information do they need to make a buying decision?

From knowing about you to becoming a raving fan, what does your customer's journey look like?

If you don't have this nailed down, you likely have a sales and marketing problem.

Or you may have a process, you just haven't really detailed it out.

Are you attracting the right type of people?

Without a cohesive marketing strategy, you end up selling to everyone with a pulse. That makes converting a customer much harder.

With today's platforms such as Google AdWords, Facebook, and LinkedIn, this becomes a lot easier and inexpensive to get your messaging in front of the right buyers who will take action.

We used to have to use the "bulldozer" strategy, blanketing TV, radio, and print with our messaging. Trade publications got us zeroed in a bit further but now with digital marketing, it becomes extremely easy to get in front of the right people at the right time.

And you get analytics to back up every click.

Marketing gets the leads, sales closes the deal

When you have a marketing problem, typically your lead quality is poor and your value proposition isn't clearly defined. You may be offering deals to prospects who are not even your intended target at all.

When you have a sales problem, organizations often squander great leads by not following up right away. Did you know that the odds of qualifying a lead on the phone decrease by over 10 times in the first hour? And the longer you wait, the worse it gets.

To use the retail store metaphor, marketing gets the buyer in the door but if sales isn't ready for the customer, they will walk in and then right back out again.

The digital equivalent of this is running paid search marketing on Facebook or AdWords. When someone enters their information into the form and hits send, who is on the other end following up? And how long does this take?

How sales & marketing can work together

Oftentimes while the marketing team is doing one thing, sales is doing another.

If sales is receiving a lot of questions on a certain product or service, can those features and benefits explained more thoroughly or broken down on the website or in the marketing materials?

A common problem is the marketing department is running promotions and sales knows nothing about them. How many times have you saw something advertised in, say, a retail store and and when questioned, the associate didn't know?

The best approach is sales and customer service always informs marketing and vice versa. Easier said than done.

But if you run the marketing or sales departments, getting this one area handled will take care of many more issues than just inner-office politics. It's just better business.

Now that's worth getting a big bonus over, don't you agree?