Revenue Journal®

This is part number two of a three-part article.
In Part 1, we told the dog's tale - the frustrations experienced by a salesperson who wanted to sell more, but never seemed to be able to get the necessary selling tools from marketing (the cats). This week, we look at the problem from the cat's perspective.

Marketing: Cool cats get cranky
As the head of marketing for a succession of companies in Silicon Valley, I worked hard to give salespeople what they needed. I made sure they had tools for every stage of the selling process. I enjoyed the work, but felt I could do more good for more salespeople if I worked in an agency. After working in a couple of agencies, I decided to go off on my own. My husband and I opened a tech marketing agency. It was April Fool's Day, 1979.

Philip and I spent years cranking out campaigns for clients. We developed efficient processes that grew our revenues while cutting costs.

In the early 90's the Mac started to change the agency business. Companies started doing more and more marketing work in-house. So, although our revenue was at an all-time high, we phased out the agency, my husband retired to pursue his many interests, and I reinvented myself.

I started working with CEOs as a rent-a-VP, retooling and rejuvenating marketing departments and selling methods. Once I had everything humming along, I'd recruit the permanent VP. I'd then work with the CEO to preserve and upgrade the improved revenue generation efforts.

Before I'd start an assignment, I'd interview customers to get hard data on how they bought the product, what they expected of my client's company, what competitors were telling them, and how they wanted to be sold to. Then I'd set to work.

I was shocked, frankly, at the inefficiency I found in those existing marketing departments. In my first rent-a-VP assignment, I was able to increase the output of the 17-person marketing department by 500% in the first 5 weeks, just by improving processes. Marketing people, by nature, are not process-oriented. They prefer the art part of marketing to the logistics part. This handicaps marketing efforts, because marketing is basically a manufacturing operation. And, due to the dominance of the web, marketing has shifted from a mix of 80% creative/20% logistics, to 20% creative/80% logistics.

Marketing efforts are also hampered by internal political battles. Marketing is the corporate playpen. Top executives, who are normally rational, behave like bratty two-year-olds when they get involved in marketing decisions. Marketers, who really do want to please (in that sense, marketers all have a little dog in them), will work their tails off to give the two-year-olds the marketing candy they want (pretty pieces and website pages), while trying to end up with a functional end result.

Unfortunately, the internal arguments often go on and on, until the deadline is tomorrow. Marketers and their vendors must then pull an all-nighter to make sure pieces or web pages are ready for the tradeshow or the product launch.

In spite of their best efforts, marketers hear through the grapevine that the salespeople are complaining to the CEO that the marketing materials aren't good enough, that the marketers don't understand the product, and that customers aren't responding to the messages in the marketing and selling materials. The salesman keeps telling the CEO: "If you put me in charge of marketing, I could do a much better job. We'd be able to sell more."

In many companies, the CEO buys this pitch - not taking into account the role that the salesperson played in the lost sales (every lost sale is the joint responsibility of both marketing and sales). The CEO, tired of the finger-pointing and persuaded by the salesperson's promises, puts the salesperson in charge of marketing.

The result? Total chaos. Salespeople expect their charm and newfound power to overcome the lead time needed to manufacture marketing and selling resources. Their "strategy" changes every few weeks, inspired by their most recent lunchtime conversation. They make outrageous promises to customers and top execs, then expect their worker bees to keep those promises. They go through marketing people like seeded grapes, getting the best out of the marketer until there's nothing sweet left, and then spitting out the remainder. After they've used up one marketer, they can always get another - partly because they are so persuasive. Their excitement is infectious.

In these situations, marketers become burnt out and bitter. They turn into very cranky cats.

The entire marketing/selling effort becomes completely dysfunctional. Potential customers can smell this kind of trouble a mile away, and will avoid doing business with the company. Revenues start to head downhill. This is the beginning of the end for many companies.

Fortunately, there is a solution, one that works for any size of company, in any industry, in any market conditions. We'll describe the solution in Part 3: How to stop the squabbling and supercharge your sales.