Sales vs. Marketing Explained

Posted On: 2006-12-08
Length:

Listen to this podcast

Let me do a little bit more introduction of our guests, Jill Conrath, as I said is the author of "Selling to Big Companies," recognized expert really, in selling to large corporations, and in fact on tope of that, her title of that being the title of her book. There's also a wonderful website that you should check out that's called sellingtobigcompanies.com. And Brian Carroll is the CEO of a company called In Touch, a lead generation, B2B lead generation company, and is the author as I said of "Lead Generation for Complex Sales," and website that hosts his great information is at startwithalead.com. So Brian and Jill, are you there?

We are here.

We are here.

Awesome. And you both, coincidentally, or otherwise, are in the state of Minnesota, right?

The great state of Minnesota.

The great state of Minnesota, which is, amazing that such a wealth of knowledge can come out of that icy place.

It's incredible.

All right. So, I'm going to, because you don't have the benefit of slides here, and the good news is, because these are really, really basic, and because I'm throwing out some topics, and I think from a format standpoint, what might be interesting, and I mention the word debate, but which often ensues sometimes when we talk, sales people and marketing people talk to each other, but maybe you just can play the role, Jill of sales, and Brian of marketing, and maybe kind of throw a topic out, get both our takes, and I don't have an egg timer here, but I'll be kind of the moderator where I'll be saying, ok that's enough on that, let's move on. So, the first topic I'm going to throw out, and it's one that I hear all the time, and I'm sure you both do as well, and that is, why don't sales and marketing folks get along? I mean, what doesn't marketing understand, and what doesn't sales understand about the problems. So, Jill, I'll throw that one to you first.

Why don't they get along? That's a good question because in just about every company I go to I see this gap between sales and marketing. I think part of it is that they are measured on different things. And what they're, you know, expected to do to be successful is very, very different. Marketing focuses on brand identity and advertisements, and lead generation and things like that. And sales people have to go out and get business tomorrow. They can't wait for six months to you know hope that something kicks in. I mean, they're accountable for tomorrow, and they're compensated for tomorrow, and so they want things that they can use right away. On the bad side what that means is they want stuff that can rush the sale along, and so marketing doesn't like that from them at all, but they're asking for tools, they're asking by the way, for bad tools often, on things that aren't effective, but that's all that they've seen, and they're trying to get business today and marketing's over there trying to have this long-term view of how it, how we position our company effectively and grow the brands strategy.

Brian, your take?

Well, my take is, I agree completely with what...