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How Marketing Hurts Sales

The last few issues touched on getting employees involved in building customer relationships, but let's now talk about something closer to home. Specifically today's lesson reveals the evil deed marketing perpetrates daily to make your sales department mad.

Yes, and if you are a sales executive or manager you'll want to leave this lesson anonymously on your marketing director's desk. Go ahead, but just keep in mind that the next lesson addresses what sales does to waste marketing resources.

Sincerely,

Justin Hitt
Consultant, Author & Speaker
https://iunctura.com/

Correction (6 Sept 2005) This lesson originally mailed with the column "Tragic Mistakes Your Marketing Department Is Doing To Hurt Sales" instead of the following featured article.

Evil Deeds Marketing Does Just To Make Sales Mad

By Justin Hitt, Strategic Relations Consultant, https://www.justinhitt.com/

Yes, there are certain evil deed marketing does just to make sales mad. While they don't mean to do these things, they cause riffs that hurt your ability to make new sales.

With this said, sales and marketing professionals don't always see each contributes equally to business success. This rivalry isn't necessary. Here is a sample of the evil deed marketing does just to makes sales mad:

• Passing along unqualified leads -- Marketing is under the gun to produce results, and nothing looks better than a huge response from a marketing campaign. The problem is if these leads aren't qualified they will not convert with sales. No conversion, well it must be sales fault.
• Forgetting to build rapport early -- Often creative folks in marketing are too busy building brand and they forget about rapport. Rapport is necessary for success in sales; it allows sales people in the door of a customer to present specific solutions. Without rapport a prospect might be interested but not willing to move forward until they feel comfortable (with you or your competitor.)
• No mutual objectives with sales -- Marketing often has its own performance objectives independent of the sales department. When marketing and sales aren't measured on the same ruler they often work against each other. Implement at least three mutual measures between sales and marketing.
• Not following a lead profile established by sales -- Does your marketing team run off generating leads without the blessing of the sales department? Many marketing teams don't talk with sales about who makes a great buyer but instead wastes time and effort looking for response. Marketing needs to talk with sales about creating a buyer profile otherwise you could be wasting more advertising dollars than you have to.

For more mistakes marketing makes working with sales, visit "Tragic Mistakes Your Marketing Department Is Doing To Hurt Sales."

Which of these mistakes does your marketing department make? Most don't mean to, but these evil deeds cost your company hundreds of thousands each year in missed opportunity. There is hope and you can overcome these obstacles, if you face these facts first.

© 2005 JWH Consolidated LLC dba Center for Strategic Relations, All rights reserved.