Sales and marketing are often considered to be the same thing, but nothing could be farther from the truth. In our industry, or any industry for that matter, you often see positions offered for a VP of Sales & Marketing. While I do believe there are talented and qualified candidates out there, I will say that seldom do you find greatness in both sales and marketing in one single person. These are both positions where you would want strong experience and education. I have to laugh when I review their job descriptions, which mostly define and require a strong sales background and very little marketing experience, and the marketing skillset is clearly positioned as a second place requirement. It brings to mind the age old question of, “What have you done for me lately?” It’s not something a sales leader jokes about these days.
The Difference between Sales and Marketing
The pressure on sales leaders for solid sales results is intense and as such, it’s not uncommon for owners and sales leaders to push harder on sales activity and actions (the areas they know more about) vs. developing new marketing strategies. In as much, the day-to-day execution of business, like the job postings mentioned above, you often find a college intern holding the marketing position, which seldom delivers the greatest possible results from a marketing standpoint. No one questions the heart of a very talented and willing college intern, but the best experience for your company will come from a true marketing professional who can deliver professional marketing.
Sales needs marketing and marketing needs sales. When both positions are present within a company, it doesn’t take very long to notice that these two leaders are worlds apart in many aspects. Sales wants everything immediately while marketing, I promise, will want to study, review and analyze the impact of everything. Both have to change for the better.
Why You Need Marketing
So if you don’t have a true marketing professional onboard, there’s your first problem, and if you do have one, they must have a servant’s heart to assist the company and sales in driving success. Your sales leader must provide constant (positive) feedback to adjust your sales team’s execution. With the speed of business today, no company can stand sluggish marketing performance, nor can they withstand poor sales results.
In every boot camp I’ve ever done, a VP of Sales asks me this question, “How can you help me differentiate my company?” That statement screams, ‘I need a marketing professional!’ It really doesn’t matter what size company you are. I hear smaller dealers claim, “We just can’t afford a marketing professional right now, but when we get a little larger, that will be a serious consideration.” Most don’t attribute the use of high quality marketing as a way to grow your business, but it is. It’s the chicken and the egg consideration; they say, ‘When we get large enough we’ll hire a marketing professional,’ but the thing is, if you hired a marketing professional you’d grow today. You need effective marketing now!
The truth is, there ARE companies who are not yet large enough to hire a full time marketing professional. My thoughts are simple—we are all selling MPS which is an outsourcing model, so, eat your own cooking and seek to outsource your marketing. Find someone within the industry who has a full competency of marketing and buy some talent. It’s like life insurance—there is never a better time to buy than today. Buy what you can afford today and focus it on the more critical areas of need.
MPS and Marketing
Since I brought up MPS, let me talk about a gigantic misconception around MPS that high quality marketing can completely satisfy. First, I hear dealers all across the U.S. tell me they’re selling MPS. Their website says so, their sales reps say so, but they don’t really understand the values of MPS or what they’re selling. Within this acronym, MPS, the most important letter is “M.”
I ask dealers or their sales reps, “What does the M stand for?” It’s not a hard question to answer and most say, “Managed.” But when I ask them, “What do you manage?” I get a bazillion answers mostly about clicks, devices, printer fleets, copies, etc. This shows you that marketing is missing. A marketing professional will define to sales the value of each of their deliverables. The facts are that you manage a portion of your client’s business typically better than they do and probably to a level of performance that they’ll never be able to reach, usually providing a significant financial benefit and always delivering an uptick in organizational performance.
Defining Your Marketing Plan
A true marketing professional will absorb your key business objectives and design an overall marketing execution plan to move your company forward. Once the 30,000-foot view is created, the details and individual programs and plans will be defined. Each of these areas must be defined in very specific steps with details on how they contribute to the key business objectives of the company.
- Your company’s profile and position in the marketplace.
- The products or services your company will take to market.
- Primary targets within your marketplace for those services.
- What type of advertising, website and support collateral will you need and what does it look like?
- What is your value proposition to whom and for which deliverables?
- What is the profile and skillset required for your sales organization?
- What specialized training will you need to provide?
- What is your sales cycle and sales process?
- What tools are needed to ensure success and accountability?
- What does your “go to market” timeline and execution look like?
- How and when do you make adjustments to your plan?
These marketing deliverables are so often misplaced onto great and loyal team members, but it shouldn’t take too much of a review to see and feel the seriousness of these tasks. Without the proper marketing plan you will look like everyone out there and you won’t have any type of differentiation.
Out-performing your competition doesn’t happen by accident. It typically comes from a marketing plan that almost always was dreamt up, created and worked through months or sometimes a year beforehand. With the speed of business today, you can’t work from behind—your marketing efforts must position your company ahead of the competition. Take a look at the list above to find out what you’re missing and if you don’t have the talent within your company, do some research and find someone who can fill that gap. But as I mentioned above, make sure you have a high quality, extremely detailed marketing execution plan, and then grow!
