Does it ever seem to you like sales people are from Mars and marketers are from Venus?

Sales people feel they must translate what they see as marketing’s one-size-fits-all approach into a practical message tailored for their unique customer while the marketing team often believes the sales people themselves are the problem because they are not following their product positioning.

What’s behind this communication gap? Language.

The Language of Sales and Marketing

Sales and marketing have different views of the world.

Salespeople say:

Marketing people do not spend enough time in the field. They don’t take specific customer complaints seriously enough. Marketing needs to create a system for better field communications.

Marketers say:

Sales is always asking for information that they have already received. We spend much effort gathering and writing up product and competitive information, send out that information, and reps call a week later for the same information. This takes time away from other important tasks we have.

Salespeople say:

Marketing should be more demanding with R&D and manufacturing to alter product designs and production schedules.

Marketers say:

We are under-resourced: too many sales chiefs and not enough implementation people.

Salespeople say:

Biggest frustration to our sales reps is lack of timely information.

Marketers say:

Our success depends on fulfilling customer expectations for tomorrow, not just today.

Salespeople say:

Sales reps’ compensation should not be penalized for price erosion…that’s a product issue out of our control.

Marketers say:

Sales is happy to criticize, rather than accept responsibility and suggest constructive improvements.

Let’s face it, sales gets input straight from the horse’s mouth, the customer

Each customer is supplying a valuable piece to the puzzle. It’s important that each sales person capture that input and makes sure it gets back to the marketing team.

Every customer has their own set of individual issues. Marketing is capturing the insights from all of sales. They are sifting and prioritizing those that are important locally, regionally and nationally. From those inputs, plans and strategies are being developed that cover all the bases, not just one account.

Customer responsiveness, urgency, and speed really are the goals of marketing

Marketing isn’t being slow ― they are being thorough and deliberate. The reason is that marketing isn’t the only department required to create a new product. That involves most of the rest of the company from ops to finance.

Whether you label it as healthy tension, territorial friction or a downright conflict of personalities, anyone who’s spent time working in marketing will be familiar with the terse, often challenging and almost always character-building relationship with sales.

Good Selling!

Greg Bonsib is an author of the new Mighty Guides Ebook Data Disruption.