Sales and marketing. Two ends of one animal.

Two trick ponies

Look at any company of more than a few people and you see a curious thing - curious to my eye anyway. Sales and marketing are two different departments. Different people with different responsibilities. And the reason it doesn't make any sense to me to organize sales and marketing that way is that the two are always in conflict.

Marketing is seen as the process of creating leads.

Sales is seen as the process of closing them.

So sales people need large numbers of leads, and they have to be good leads. Good leads don't take so much work to close, of course.

Marketing is always under pressure to supply more leads, and the sales people always complain that the leads are not good enough. Marketing complains that the lazy ***s in sales just cherry pick the easiest leads and if they would just do some work they have plenty of leads. And their position is that if they are asked to increase lead volume, quality goes down, increase lead quality, volume goes down. Makes sense.

I think of the story about the group of blind men who feel an elephant to learn about it, and since each feels a different part - tail, leg, trunk, side - they have completely different, conflicting ideas about what an elephant is all about.

The people who set up a sales team and a marketing department, then set them free to fight for power and waste time and effort arguing, must have a strange idea of what this sales and marketing animal is.

So, what does this mean for us, as solopreneurs?

One two trick pony

I see marketing as the conversations you have with many people at once, and sales as the conversations you have with people individually. The thing is, it's a smooth path from one to the other. I don't want to stretch this animal metaphor far enough to suggest which end is which.

Let's just say that sales and marketing is all one process, with different tools and techniques at the beginning and the end.

If we look at the process from the viewpoint of our customer it becomes clearer. Now we see a process of first making contact with many people, who move along a path of awareness, interest, belief and trust, until finally, in much smaller numbers, all at their own pace, they are ready for a one on one conversation that results in a transaction.

Seems to me, if the people who have the conversations that result in signatures on dotted lines have more to do with creating the initial awareness, it will be a smoother process. And if the people responsible for developing relationships with many prospects are on the same team as the people who do the handshakes, surely there will be a better balance of volume and quantity of leads.

As solopreneurs, or small business owners, harmony between sales and marketing is built in - it's just us doing both! Here's how that benefits us: When we understand that marketing is a sales conversation with more people than we can talk to in person, it becomes far more effective.

Take good care of that little sales and marketing critter.