Revenue Journal®

The problem with marketing and sales is that they are the functions inside companies most likely to be driven more by emotions and anecdotal "evidence" than they are by facts. The result is never as profitable as it could be.

If salespeople dominate decisions, without the benefit of qualitative customer research and buying process analysis, the atmosphere is always dominated by fear of losing the next sale, and activity is always frantic.

The salesperson will send an email to the marketing person: "I just closed this sale. I sent this fax to them, and they read it while we were talking to each other, and the person loved this fax. We need an email and landing page that uses this copy!!!" The marketing person will comply. The salesperson will then talk to another customer, who will react positively to something else, and the salesperson will send another email to the marketing person, demanding another email and landing page.

An endless series of campaigns can be created this way. Meanwhile, the company can be losing market share due to an unseen market shift or a competitor who is attracting customers to its site and selling them - without them ever talking to a salesperson. Companies that are driven by sales-originated firedrills are steadily outsold by competitors who eventually drive them out of business.

If marketing people dominate decisions - again, without the benefit of customer research and buying process analysis - the marketing people will develop campaigns that they believe will be effective, because they have read that certain types of email campaigns are working, or customers are flocking to YouTube, or content-dominated websites do a good job of elevating "organic" (non-paid) listings in search engine result pages.

So they dutifully create those types of campaigns, roll them out to the company's managers and salespeople, and get ready for the leads they assume will come in. Some leads do come in, and some sales are made as a result.

However, once again, the company is sure to be missing the major trends driving customer decisions and behavior, and competitors who do a better job of finding this out will capture more leads and close more sales.

I would guess, based on experience with literally thousands of companies of all sizes, that at least 95% of all companies fall into the emotional, sales-driven or marketing-driven categories just described.

Both models are dysfunctional. Often, both models are at work simultaneously, in the same company. Salespeople foist their fear-driven fire drill on marketing, and marketing foists its "campaign of the week" on salespeople. Both groups fight against each other to gain the CEO's favor. It's a counterproductive mess.

It is testimony to the eagerness of the customer to buy - and to the health of the world economy in general - that so many companies survive, in spite of using these emotion-driven sales and marketing methods.

The alternative, which works whenever and wherever it is adopted, is a model where market data drives marketing campaigns and selling methods. Here's how it works.

1) The marketing department includes a datamaster. This person's main job is to analyze the customer's buying process and the internal selling process, from lead to closed sale to after-sale support. This person uses a variety of methods to track these processes, including web tracking software, and observation and analysis of lead processing functions and salespeople as they sell. She maps out customer buying processes and lead processing, documenting where people "drop off" as they go through the buying process and where the lead processing flow is slowed down or where leads "fall through the cracks" and never make it through the system. This information is presented to management in the form of diagrams and statistics, painting a clear and accurate picture of both buyer and lead processing patterns.

2) The company regularly interviews its current customers, lost sales, prospects, and partners. In-depth, conversational interviews are conducted by phone.

• Current customers. Customers who have made a purchase are asked to describe their buying process, from the moment they entered a search term into Google to the moment when they decided to buy - and then to describe their experience after they made the purchase. Their buying processes and experiences with the website and salespeople are documented and mapped. Patterns are detected and analyzed.

• Lost sales. People who contacted the company but who didn't make a purchase are also interviewed, to find out why they chose not to buy, who they bought from instead, and why. This helps the company to assess the strengths and weaknesses of their competition, properly assess the threats, and figure out how to fight back.

• Prospects. Prospects who are still considering a purchase are interviewed - by a marketer, not a salesperson - to discover their decision-making process and determine what is keeping them from buying. If the survey is conducted properly, the prospect will reveal the "barriers to the sale," including salespeople who did more pushing than listening, and websites that failed to answer the prospect's questions.

• Partners. Every business has partners who get involved in the sale in some way. These partners are seldom "dedicated" solely to the one company. They work with a number of similar companies, and come to know the strengths and weaknesses of each one. If asked correctly, they will reveal this useful information.
  

3) The quantitative and qualitative data collected are organized and presented to management. Company managers use the data to make sure that:

• Marketers create campaigns that address key customer concerns and answer the questions that customers ask as they are buying. The answers also address competitive issues, pointing out how the company's products and services are superior to those offered by competitors (without actually naming competitors).

• The website is designed to answer customer questions and make it easy for customers to buy, from the "find us" stage to the "buy from us" stage, to the "get help from us" stage.

• Marketers set up effective lead-processing systems. Every single lead is treated with the urgency it deserves (some leads are more "urgent" than others; this reality is built into the system). It should be noted here that, in many cases, by the time a customer comes to a company's website, the customer is already part way down the buying process path - if not "almost done" - and must be considered a "hot" lead. All leads are entered and tracked. No leads end up in a salesperson's "when I get around to it" drawer. There is no such drawer.

• Sales managers follow up on selling activity on an hourly, daily, and weekly basis. All leads that can be closed are closed. Any leads that are not closed are analyzed and put into the "follow up" marketing system, if appropriate. Salespeople are being trained constantly. They learn how to improve their ability to answer questions, find out what the customer needs, meet customer needs, enter data at the right time and in the right way, and report back to management on what they're hearing from customers as they sell.
  

This isn't rocket science - it's a process. It's not a theory - it works. I know it works because I have used this process many times for client companies. We have put the right people and the right processes in place. We have made sure that the people and processes are properly managed.

These companies shift from emotion-driven sales and marketing to data-driven sales and marketing. Their marketing and selling departments become as professional and manageable as finance and manufacturing. They are never blind-sided. They know what their customers are thinking and what they want. They know what their competitors are doing and how to sell effectively against them. They make every sale that can be made. They dominate their markets. They become "the big dog."

One of the biggest barriers to your company's revenue growth is the battle that goes on every single day between marketers and salespeople. Each has legitimate grievances. Each group pays lip service to getting along - especially in your presence - but they really don't respect each other and they usually work at cross-purposes to each other. The smallest and the largest companies have this problem.

There is a solution, however. And if you implement it, the squabbling will cease. The two groups will begin working toward the same goal. And, your customers will respond positively to your coordinated, customer-centric efforts. Your revenues will go up.

In this three-part series, we will reveal what is happening when you're not in the room - and in doing so, help you recognize the problem. We will tell the salesperson's side of the story first,and in the second part, the marketer's story. Both stories are based on personal experience. I can do this because I spent many years as a salesperson (dog), became a marketer (cat), and now help CEOs improve the effectiveness of both types of people. This gives me the freedom and perspective to speak the truth about cats and dogs - and, more importantly for you, to describe a solution that works.

In the third article, we'll describe the solution and how you can put it to work.

Part 1 of 3:

Selling. It's a dog's life.

As a salesperson, I made cold calls - on the phone, by car, and on foot. At a very young age, I learned what happens when your selling efforts don't work, and you end up eating chicken wings, and nothing but chicken wings, for three weeks running because eating anything else means you can't afford to buy the gas you need to drive to your next cold call.

I personally made promises to my customers, because I was told by our product developers that "the product will be ready on July 15." A short time later, I had to go back to those same customers, hat in hand, and personally apologize because the product was not going to be ready on July 15. I made promises on behalf of the company, but it was my personal reputation that suffered when the company broke those promises.

I tried to get the marketers to understand how urgently I needed more and better selling tools. Like the dog begging for a stick to be thrown, I was at their mercy. My commission depended - in no small part - on their output, and they never seemed to understand the gravity or urgency of my need for selling tools that worked.

I sold all types of products and services. I got good at it, in spite of the shortage of good selling tools. I made good money. To make up for the selling tool shortage, I did what most salespeople do: I created my own presentations, sales letters, and mailers.

After working my way up into sales management, I decided that I wanted to become part of the solution rather than stay at the receiving end of the problem. I'd also decided, after mastering the art of cold calling, that there had to be a better way to start the selling relationship. Cold calls are tough on the caller and irritating for the customer. I shifted into in-house marketing, determined to do a good job of helping the salespeople sell.

So I began my life as a cat.

Part 2, next week: The cat's tale

Part 3, week after: How to get your dogs and cats to sing in harmony

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.

One of the biggest barriers to your company's revenue growth is the battle that goes on every single day between marketers and salespeople. Each has legitimate grievances. Each group pays lip service to getting along - especially in your presence - but they really don't respect each other and they usually work at cross-purposes to each other. The smallest and the largest companies have this problem.

There is a solution, however. And if you implement it, the squabbling will cease. The two groups will begin working toward the same goal. And, your customers will respond positively to your coordinated, customer-centric efforts. Your revenues will go up.

In this three-part series, we will reveal what is happening when you're not in the room - and in doing so, help you recognize the problem. We will tell the salesperson's side of the story first,and in the second part, the marketer's story. Both stories are based on personal experience. I can do this because I spent many years as a salesperson (dog), became a marketer (cat), and now help CEOs improve the effectiveness of both types of people. This gives me the freedom and perspective to speak the truth about cats and dogs - and, more importantly for you, to describe a solution that works.

In the third article, we'll describe the solution and how you can put it to work.

Part 1 of 3:

Selling. It's a dog's life.

As a salesperson, I made cold calls - on the phone, by car, and on foot. At a very young age, I learned what happens when your selling efforts don't work, and you end up eating chicken wings, and nothing but chicken wings, for three weeks running because eating anything else means you can't afford to buy the gas you need to drive to your next cold call.

I personally made promises to my customers, because I was told by our product developers that "the product will be ready on July 15." A short time later, I had to go back to those same customers, hat in hand, and personally apologize because the product was not going to be ready on July 15. I made promises on behalf of the company, but it was my personal reputation that suffered when the company broke those promises.

I tried to get the marketers to understand how urgently I needed more and better selling tools. Like the dog begging for a stick to be thrown, I was at their mercy. My commission depended - in no small part - on their output, and they never seemed to understand the gravity or urgency of my need for selling tools that worked.

I sold all types of products and services. I got good at it, in spite of the shortage of good selling tools. I made good money. To make up for the selling tool shortage, I did what most salespeople do: I created my own presentations, sales letters, and mailers.

After working my way up into sales management, I decided that I wanted to become part of the solution rather than stay at the receiving end of the problem. I'd also decided, after mastering the art of cold calling, that there had to be a better way to start the selling relationship. Cold calls are tough on the caller and irritating for the customer. I shifted into in-house marketing, determined to do a good job of helping the salespeople sell.

So I began my life as a cat.

Part 2, next week: The cat's tale

Part 3, week after: How to get your dogs and cats to sing in harmony

The CMO Council and MarketBridge just conducted a study to determine how marketing is perceived and how marketers think they're doing. The results agree with what I've observed for many years: the very nature of marketing has changed and many marketers haven't changed with it.

The web has changed the way people buy, forever. We all know it. We all do it ourselves. We research, using the web, before we buy. We Google, we hunt around, we click from one site to another in search of the product or service we need. As we hunt, we get our first glimpse of a company's home page and decide, in an instant, if the company should be trusted with our money and credit card information. That's the buyer's side of the story.

On the seller's side of the equation, CEOs are only interested in hiring marketers who understand this shift in buyer behavior, embraced it a long time ago, and have been aggressively learning and applying online marketing techniques ever since - including email marketing, SEO, landing pages, pay-per-click, blogs, viral marketing, and website conversion.

When the web first emerged, CEOs saw that digital marketing methods could give them the accountability that they were never able to get from the old loosey-goosey style of marketing. They continue to insist on accountability. Never mind that the website visitor is anonymous; that response to email campaigns has dwindled to direct-mail levels with the proliferation of spam; that people don't want to have to register in order to shop; that real website accountability takes time, money, and expensive software. CEOs don't care. They're in a "make it so" mood. "If you can't prove it pays, you can't make the play," is the CEO's mantra.

Contrast this with the fact that 73% of the 400 marketers polled in the CMO study say that they "have no formal marketing performance scorecard" to rate their department's performance, and you can see why less than 10% of the survey respondents from large companies said their marketing group was "highly influential and strategic." Less than half felt their teams were "well regarded and respected."

Years ago I said that marketing had shifted from "80% creative and 20% logistics" to "80% logistics and 20% creative." CEOs hiring marketing managers are now looking for candidates who are logistically sophisticated. One candidate, who is a top condtender for a job I'm helping a client fill, has a BA degree in marketing and logistics, and an MBA in marketing and finance.

Those who got into marketing because they "like working with people" are struggling now. Their only hope is to start thinking more like a finance person and to become the company's expert on the customer (by personally interviewing customers every single week). Otherwise, they will find themselves replaced by someone who has an MBA in marketing and finance, has kept up with the latest technologies, and persistently and consistently listens to customers.